455 Promo from NewTek on Vimeo.
I keep calling it a Tricorder. You know. The one that was on Star Trek.
It was a gizmo that helped Captain Kirk and his team do scans of alien planets, record data and probably looked a lot more futuristic on camera then it actually was.
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| courtesy Forbes.com |
Well, just wait until you see Centennial Journalism’s new TV control room in the news lab when you come back to campus next month.
Gone are the racks of 1950’s-style monitors and VHS machines which served as a backdrop to one of our graduates’ testimonials.
(Editor’s note: Fast Track grad Francois Biber was working in Vermillion, Alberta as an editor for a Sun Media paper there and is now moving to Saskatoon to work for NewsTalk 650.)
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| Francois Biber, testimonial about Centennial Journalism |
The equipment did work, and it certainly give Centennial Journalism students a real time, live to air experience of producing their own Observer TV newscasts and election programs. But the gear consumed a lot of electricity, wars noisy, slow, and the cameras were Standard Definition, not High Definition, which is where TV News and Current Affairs is at, these days.
In the last week, folks from Cinequip have been hard at work in the News Lab installing the new equipment, green screen, robotic cameras, teleprompters, IFBs (talkback system between anchors and producers), new audio mixer (16 channels!!!), and the “TV studio in a box” called a Tricaster, which will — at the touch of a few buttons — give us a new switcher, allow us to go live, stream to the web, capture programs as they are going out on the air, enable students to have graphics and subtitles, and store ENG packages. It will make their stuff look professional, especially in HD.
Take a peek at the NewTek promotional video higher up in this post, of the Tricaster 455. Or click on the link:
(Maybe the Tricaster can mark assignments?)
The New York Giants use a Tricaster for their interactive shows.
Oh, and I nearly forgot.
It can do virtual sets.
Which gives students the option of broadcasting with the working Observer News newsroom in the background, or maybe, even doing their live reports…. from some new planet, “where no man has gone before” where Captain Kirk and Dr. Spock will be using their Tricaster — I mean Tricorder — to scan aliens. We’re being trained on how to use it next week.
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| Sylvan Ng with purple cables! |
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| Tricaster from Newtek |
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| Extra lighting, for new Green Screen |
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| Nasser Mroueh, head of installation, Cinequip. |