Ottawa-based Shopify.com exists to supply entrepreneurs in every corner of the world with the tools they need to start their own businesses. From creating a brand to managing orders, shipping and payments to setting up a business website, Shopify.com makes it easy to launch a new business.

Since its inception, Shopify’s focus on the entrepreneur has given the company a uniquely entrepreneurial culture. At the fulcrum of that culture is the need to quickly and efficiently share information company-wide. Having a workforce sprinkled all around the globe makes this compulsion to communicate difficult. But moving into the future, with a new production facility featuring NewTek products, and with the added flexibility provided by NewTek’s NDI technology, Shopify.com is poised to continue providing it’s customers with the necessary tools to survive in the new entrepreneurial economy of the future by motivating its workforce.

“The product we put out is a “Wow” product,” says Zack Duncan Broadcast Lead at Shopify.com. “It’s something that makes our employees stop, take notice, and walk away remembering what they saw. Our main goal on the broadcast team is to always give people who aren’t present in the moment the experience that they were actually there. We want everyone at Shopify to have an immersive experience and feel that they are all valued members of this company, even if they aren’t sitting in the front row.

NewTek

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Sports fans love to see those “Wow!” moments in the game again and again, and from multiple angles. The same goes for those moments when officials make a controversial call. NewTek 3Play^® 3P1 provides four-channel synchronized recording that makes offering replays quick and easy, plus allows for switching angles during instant replay just as simply as if you were switching during the live segments. NewTek Video Producer Richard Evans shows us – in less than two minutes – how to set up for such replays and how to execute them in production with a couple of button presses.

Building on what we see in the video, here are some tips:

• With 3Play’s variable speed playback, you can use the T-Bar to use slow-motion for the replay so viewers can see the fantastic play action, or see what the ref saw and called, in detail from every angle captured for maximum insight
• Set up your social media publishing parameters ahead of time with the Auto Upload settings and send selected replay clips or stills to social media just by pressing the Publish button
• NDI^® Telestrator Pro is standard with 3Play 3P1. Network an appropriate device for your experts, and they can comment on your replays with dual-channel telestration capability

All of these and more are designed to be done on the fly without interrupting your flow of live production for the game or event.

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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.

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Professional streamers are finding that they can reach much larger audiences if they can provide a stream not just to multiple networks, but in more than one format or mix. NewTek’s production systems have long had the ability for live streaming to multiple destinations from a single encoder. Now, NewTek is enhancing its production systems with a second encoder.

NewTek VMC1 and TriCaster^® TC1 have both had dual streaming encoders from inception. TriCaster Advanced Edition Version 3 now brings dual streaming capability to TriCaster 8000, 860, 855, 460, 455, 410 and TriCaster Mini models – once again, NewTek’s software-driven production technology allows you to advance your capabilities in your current product with a software upgrade. In this tutorial, NewTek video content producer Richard Evans shows how to configure and use the second streaming encoder for your TriCaster.

We hope this video is helpful for you in using your NewTek TriCaster. If you have suggestions for other topics you would like covered in a Facebook Live or Tip Jar Tutorial, please send us a message. We will see you next time.

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Learn more about NewTek HERE

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. Click here to read the full article.

A major strength of NewTek live production systems is the command system and the flexibility that it provides to customize production to your needs and streamline operations with automation. Three primary abilities that it allows are:

• Turning complex sequences of operations into a single keypress
• Distributing control of a NewTek IP Series, TriCaster^® or 3Play^® live production system across multiple devices when extended crew is desirable and available
• Extending the reach of one technical director or a small crew to control all networked NewTek systems from one of them, when crew is limited

This tutorial shows an example of the third ability. The particular configuration demonstrated is controlling one TriCaster from another, but the capability is there between any type of NewTek production systems that reside on the same network.

These are the essential elements for the type of setup demonstrated:

• The production systems are on the same local network
• Both systems have the Macro Panel open
• The target system has Macros active that are set up with a trigger set to a specific message received via the network and to execute one or more commands on receiving the proper message.
• The command system has macros set up to address a message to the target system by the name assigned to that system or by IP address

As the technical director on the command system triggers macros, the target system will receive the messages over the network and respond by executing the proper macro.

The steps to set up each macro on the target system and on the command system are covered in the video. They are:

• Create a macro named Play Both DDRs on the target system, that plays one DDR to Preview and one to Program. Set one of the four trigger buttons to “Listen” to the network.

• Create a macro named Remote Play on the command system intended to trigger the Play Both DDRs macro on the target system. The template for sending the command is shown in the Macro Editor image above, and includes the URL of the target system as well as the message to send.

• Click Play on the new Remote Play macro on the command system. It will send the command to the network, and the macro trigger button on the Target system that is Listening will receive the command, and update the trigger button entry to display the new trigger, such as net:play. From then on, when the operator on the command system uses that Remote Play macro, it will trigger the Play Both DDRs macro on the target system, as seen in the tutorial video.

Repeat the process for as many macros as you would like to set up for a given target system in a particular project.

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.

Norway’s University of Agder is among the pioneers of higher education institutions that record and stream lectures for a major portion of their curriculum. They began ten years ago with traditional recording and post production for streaming and on-demand video. Today, their program is based in state-of-the-art IP workflow for live video production and streaming with two TriCaster® TC1 16-input UHD integrated live production systems and a suite of cameras and devices enabled with NewTek’s bi-directional IP technology NDI®.

Audio, video, metadata, control and communications for video production are all handled over the network rather than with baseband video, audio and control cables, saving huge costs in infrastructure. In addition, this powers incredible flexibility and portability for the 17 cameras available for coverage across the campuses of the university. Computer systems equipped with free NewTek NDI applications can make their full display or specific application windows available as video sources on the network as well. The result is that a small crew has been able to achieve 150 hours of live production and streaming per week, with improved production quality for many aspects, such as getting a live feed of the media used from the lecturer’s system or device, rather than having to aim a camera at a projection screen or video display in the classroom.

“When we at first started live streaming lectures, there was always a lot of configuration to go through – finding the right IP address, which port and which protocol to use. Now, with TriCaster and NDI, any box connected in any auditorium will automatically appear on the TriCaster – it is simply plug and play, and we save a lot of time,” says Rolf Sigurd Løvland….read more

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The most complete production system available today, TriCaster TC1 represents the continued innovation of the iconic product that defined an industry. Designed with the way you work in mind and equipped with hundreds of advanced production capabilities, it has everything you need to do video your way today—and tomorrow.

Switching, streaming, recording in HD, 3G, and 4K UHD 60p

Native software driven processing for maximum production power and flexibility

Comprehensive camera coverage and compelling multi-source video mixing, including 16 external inputs and 4 M/Es

Studio-grade Skype® video calling with multi-channel Skype TX software integration

Integrated video servers allowing playback, replay, and live editing without any additional hardware

Multi-channel ISO recording to full-resolution QuickTime® and H.264 files for VOD, post-production, and archive

Dual-channel live streaming to Facebook Live, Microsoft® Azure®, Periscope, Twitch, YouTube Live, and more

Real-time social media sharing to Facebook, Imgur, LinkedIn, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, and more

Powerful production automation with custom macro commands, sophisticated full-motion compositing, and flexible control options

Advanced audio mixing with multi-source configuration and control, professional DSPs, and 4 x 4 x 4 channel routing

Premier creative capabilities, including multi-bus mix effects, animated titles and transitions, advanced chromakeying, spectacular live virtual sets, and more.