January 21, 2010
The NewTek TriCaster offers a Web video solution for users at all levels.
By Iain Stasukevich
Introduced at the NAB Show in 2005, the NewTek TriCaster was ahead of its time, as Web video had yet to become commonplace outside major media sites and those focused specifically on video delivery. But times have changed, with NewTek not only updating and upgrading their wares — including the recent introduction of a Mini Cooper-based TriCaster mobile production unit built in conjunction with TodoCast — but broadband-baring Web users have evolved to expect high-quality video from virtually every site they visit. 
The Mini Cooper-based NewTek/ TodoCast mobile Webcast vehicle; a Web video from the Country Music Hall of Fame (lower right). The following profiles offer some insight into how NewTek’s gear has helped four users upgrade their Web video output.
MUSICAL MISSION
“We have three goals: to identify, preserve, and educate the culture of country music,” says Kerry Cicero, director of communications at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee. “Education is the backbone of our institution.” It’s for this reason, among others, that this landmark is unique among its peers for being the only music-oriented museum to hold an accreditation from the American Association of Museums. They host 12,000 to 15,000 students a year and showcase renowned musicians and songwriters on a weekly basis. Film screenings and family programs are programmed to augment current exhibits.
“Reaching out to the public is a major part of what we do, but we’re limited in terms of space,” says Cicero. “Our on-site theater only holds 213 people.”
Of particular note are the quarterly Poets and Prophets and annual Artist in Residence programs, where country music luminaries sit down for intimate Q&A sessions with museum visitors. “These are the kinds of programs that need to be shared with more than 213 people,” Cicero explains. “We always record them for our archives, but with TriCaster, we can stream it live to our Web site.”
Currently the museum utilizes the TriCaster STUDIO and up to three Canon XL2 cameras to live switch the events in their theater. Video projects coordinator Laura Seivert adds graphics to the video as it’s ingested, then uses the TriCaster’s native editing capabilities to polish the content and prep it for archiving. “The TriCaster is simple to operate and is perfect for our needs and budget,” Seivert remarks. “The best feature is iVGA: It allows us to seamlessly incorporate archival photos that are displayed from a separate laptop into the edit without having to pre-load images.”
The Web development company Digome sets up the finished clips on the museum’s site for on-demand viewing. Following the upcoming redesign of the Hall of Fame’s site, Cicero hopes to offer their special programming live on the Internet in 2010. “Our new video player is very dynamic,” she notes. Videos are displayed at higher resolutions and the player window is now full-screen-capable. Future content will also include chapter stops and graphics.”
“As the largest repository for country music materials in the world, we need to reach a worldwide audience," says Seivert. "The TriCaster allows us to do that."
STILL A PRO
These days, NFL legend Chuck Muncie might be spending more time off the field than on, but he’s still as close to the game now as he was 30 years ago, when he was breaking records for the New Orleans Saints and the San Diego Chargers. After starting the Chuck Muncie Youth Foundation, which offers free social services, mentoring programs and tattoo removals, and the Muncie Combine, a kind of job fair for prospective college athletes, the former running back is bringing a little Monday Night flavor to high school football games throughout the state of California.
The idea of broadcasting high school games was a natural follow-up to the Muncie Combine, in which high school athletes are drilled and evaluated and ultimately connected with college scouts. Muncie’s Ventura County-based KADYtv Sports recently partnered with the California Interscholastic Federation and iBN Sports to stream actual games live to the Internet, not only increasing the visibility of the players, but attracting much-needed local sponsorship for school sports programs.
“The TriCaster allows us to do the same kind of broadcast as a pro game on TV,” says Muncie, noting that the live games provide more exposure for the athletes. Most games are shot with two to six cameras, directed by a three-man team operating the TriCaster STUDIO and a laptop. Statistics like down and distance, time on the clock, and player IDs are incorporated along with commercials and other information.
“Our setup is very straightforward,” Muncie explains. “We pull up in our RV and we’ll stage in the press box or wherever the Internet connection is. Sometimes we’ll be there with a big network; they roll up in these big production trucks and it takes them all day to set up their cables and their four cameras. We get there an hour before the game and we’re set up in 20 minutes with half the manpower.”
KADYtv.com operates multiple TriCaster units, enabling them to cover more events in a season, and sometimes multiple games in one evening. “Before TriCaster, we did about 40 or 50 live events,” says Muncie. “Since then, we’ve done more than 600. The exposure it provides for the athletes and these schools is enormous.”
SUPER STUDENTS
Every weekday at 9:00 a.m., the Gilbert Magnet School in Las Vegas, Nevada, presents Super 6 School News. Each episode is hosted and produced by Gilbert students, with each grade level taking on different aspects of the job. Per the Gilbert Web site: “These broadcasts focus not only on events happening in our school but also integrate all areas of the curriculum. They are viewed live in every classroom via the school’s internal TV channel, thus providing a daily means of communicating and sharing information.”
Daun Korkow, Super 6 School News director and program coordinator, oversees the production training and studio operations at Gilbert. “The students learn how to run a teleprompter, be a floor manager, a sound manager and a technical director. They all rotate around, so they get to do all those jobs before the year is through." The backbones of Super 6 School News’ daily broadcast are the TriCaster Pro and TriCaster STUDIO. Korkow’s been doing this for more than a decade. Most of the equipment was analog in the beginning, and simple switchers were used to record programs to tape. Then came GlobalStreams’ GlobeCaster, which offered an all-in-one studio solution. Five years ago the GlobeCaster setup was traded in for a pair of Newtek TriCasters, and Korkow’s never looked back. “The TriCaster is easy and capable,” says Korkow. “It’s something we can teach a 9 or 10 year old to use to deliver a good-looking product.”
There are two sets in the Super 6 School News studio, serviced by three cameras (Sony DXC-327s) and a TriCaster PRO feeding a TriCaster STUDIO. Camera 1 is on the anchors at all times, feeding S-Video directly into the TriCaster PRO while one student runs the graphics and lower thirds. Camera 2 works the same way, except that it handles the special reports, the lunch reports and the weather reports (a separate S-Video output feeds into the STUDIO). Camera 3 is usually a CU or ISO, and backup tapes are run off the STUDIO. “The PRO is our live unit, unless we’re on the road,” Korkow reveals. “We’ll take the PRO and some Sony PD-150s because the STUDIO unit is a little more entrenched, but since the PRO is just feeding the the other one, it’s easy to unplug and go.”
At home, Gilbert has an intranet connecting as many as 25 classrooms, providing students with the ability to deliver content to the Super 6 School News studio through the school’s wireless area network. Additionally, there are as many as a dozen cameras set up throughout the school that can be patched in to. “I can sit there and get any content from anywhere in the school and put it on the TriCaster,” says Korkow. “We have 12TB of storage on a SAN, but we never use hard drives, Flash drives or DVDs to transfer data — it’s all done through the network. Pictures and video from the media server can flow in any direction.”
Korkow is deservedly proud of what his students are accomplishing with Super 6 School News. “Out of the 350 schools in this district, there are about 15 or 20 that use TriCasters, and we’re the only ones who are operating on this level,” he enthuses. “Now, I’m not naive enough to think we’re Monday Night Football, but we’re giving these kids a goal and teaching them the basics of how a real show is done.”
POP CULTURE REMIX
Revision3 calls itself a “television network for the Internet generation.” Founded in 2005 by TechTV alumni Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson, Dan Huard, Ron Gorodetzky and David Prager, Revision3 reflects the sensibilities and preferences of viewers who grew up not only in front of the television, but online as well
Featuring “experts, not actors,” Revision3 content covers a wide range of topics from gaming (CO-OP), movies (Film Riot), music (XLR8R TV), and the latest in technology (Tekzilla). Much of it is delivered ready to watch, having been shot and edited beforehand, but some content, particularly their event coverage, is streamed live to the Web.
“We do all of our live broadcasts with the TriCaster Studio,” says Ryan Vance, Revision3’s VP of programming and production. “Before, you’d have to bring in a big truck and production trailers and edit trailers and have this huge compound with all of the necessary equipment. TriCaster puts all of that into a little box. You have to make sure you have the ability to transmit, and the bandwidth on the upload side, but if you have that taken care of, TriCaster can really be a production truck in a box.”
Recent events include E3, CES, the Aspen Comedy Festival, and Comic-Con in San Diego. In many cases, content is captured live by up to three cameras (Vance and studio manager Josh Villegas prefer the JVC GY-HD110), switched and streamed. Graphics and other pre-recorded elements are stored on the TriCaster for immediate access. Revision3 uses BitGravity fro video delivery. “They’re good with integrating the TriCaster technology,” says Vance. The standard-def output is taken via FireWire into into a MacBook Pro with the BitGravity client on it and uploaded directly to the Revision3 site.
“We also use it to broadcast live to the screens in our live Diggnation stage events,” Vance explains. “We’ll do the shows in a venue where we’ll have 1,500 to 2,000 people and we need to broadcast the camera elements to a projection screen. It basically takes away the need for a switcher in the live presentation environment.” The TriCaster is also capable of recording up to 20 hours of content in MPEG-2. “I record right into the TriCaster directly when we’re not going live out to the Internet,” Vance remarks, adding, “If we’re going to go out to a location and try to come back with a finished show, we’re definitely going to be using the TriCaster for that. We don’t see why we would do things any other way.”
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