INCOLSA

Jeff Humphrey of INCOLSA (The Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority) has been a long time VT[4] user and has done a great deal of streaming and videoconferencing between various libraries. When tasked with designing a portable live production solution, Jeff invested in TriCaster.

“Our organization exists to support every imaginable type of library in Indiana, and a big part of our operation is training and continuing education. INCOLSA maintains a large meeting room where we originate workshops and current awareness sessions for our members. Roughly 6 years ago, INCOLSA worked with the Indiana State Library to obtain a grant to distribute two-way interactive videoconferencing units to public libraries throughout the state, giving us the capability to add multiple sites for high-demand topics. The first 4 years, we averaged about 8 workshops a year. In 2004, we had 22 workshops. By the end of July 2005, we had already produced 27 workshops.

TriCaster was first put to use in April for our Annual Board Meeting. During its first outing, we were blown away by both the power of this little unit and the affordability.

The Board meeting called for logos and promotional videos to be integrated into our live switch so I loaded our logo to the picture player and looped a promo video right off the hard drive for processional and lunch. To handle the task of speaker identification, we used TriCaster’s Title Templates to create lower thirds and modified them on the fly. With only 45 minutes of setup, we were able to produce a 6-hour live event flawlessly. Switching between a camera, a Polycom videoconferencing unit, and a scan converted PC. The real beauty of this project was being the easy-to-learn interface of TriCaster. With less than 5 minutes of training, a coworker understood how to run TriCaster.

Anyone who has produced live events knows that the real work starts when the show ends. In the past, we would spend hours, breaking down and loading racks of gear. With TriCaster, I simply packed the TriCaster into my PortaBrace cargo case with all of my cables, threw it over my shoulder, picked up my LCD monitor with one hand, walked through the parking lot, opened the truck door, and placed it all on the passenger seat. Teardown has never been so easy.

Having a portable, professional-grade video system is helping create new ways for INCOLSA to better serve our member libraries. For example, we are producing and providing a live stream for an After Hours concert for an annual library Ice Cream Social and Grill Out, something we would never have tried before purchasing the TriCaster.”