Education:
Grady College of Journalism - Univertsity of Georgia
Broadcast facility needed to find affordable replacements for aging equipment
Grady College of Journalism relies on NewTek and Intel to replace racks of equipment with Pentium-powered TV Studio-in-a-box.
Opportunity
NewTek has long been a provider of powerful, yet affordable graphics and video products to provide its customers with the ability to make more money, gain more personal freedom and enjoy life a little more. NewTek made a strategic move to count on the ever-growing power of desktop computing, and replicated all the racks of broadcast equipment used in TV stations in software modules, taking advantage of the dramatically accelerated cycle of faster processors.
Solution
The Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia produces newsource15, a daily 30-minute news broadcast. They recently swapped out $350,000 in equipment with two VTs. David Hazinski, who heads the Broadcast News department says "We’re basically replacing two Grass 200’s with VTs, and I plan to buy another one to use as an additional CG factory and DDR in a live news environment."” He says the second VT will be used as both a switcher and nonlinear edit system for producing the college's weekly shows.
On the other side of Altanta Faraz Ahmed, at just 13 years of age, regularly uses VT® to assist Five Forks middle-school with a 4 or 5-camera broadcast of the daily announcements and school news. VT provides customized transitions between shots, playback of recorded materials graphics creation, and video editing. As a member of the Video club, Faraz and his classmates arrive before school starts each day to produce the show, with different students immediately jumping in to create and edit. They have even taken advantage of VT’s skins-based interface to design a more simplified switcher module for his classmates.
Technologies
Intel-based desktop computing has reached a critical point for broadcasting, as the multimedia oriented Pentium 4 processor is powerful enough to manipulate uncompressed, broadcast-quality video in real-time, without the assistance of auxiliary chips. NewTek was poised to seize that advantage with VT[3], by emulating the look and behavior of expensive television components such as video switchers, character generators, processing amplifiers and digital effects generators in software.
Results & Benefits
The reliance on processing power instead of custom chips means a faster turnaround for NewTek customers, who regularly receive upgrades to VT[3] with new capabilities and modules added in software. “This cycle has been amazing”, says NewTek’s VT Product Manager Paul Lara. “This software-centric approach has allowed NewTek to release upgrades on average six times a year. No longer do we have to plow through the hardware-based cycles of design, fabrication, testing, modification and manufacture, as our programmers can simply write new code and provide features to an eager user-base, sometimes in just a few days.”
In an educational environment, there are numerous advantages to using VT for production, with cost right at the top. Schools are constantly saddled with inadequate budgets, and VT offers all the live and post production abilities needed in one package. Add to that the benefit of emulating real-world, rack-mounted equipment provides a learning opportunity when teaching anyone about broadcast production, as it reinforces the look of what may be encountered in a network control room.
VT[3] offers real-time capabilities in both live and post production, without the need to render finals, which makes working close to deadline much more pleasant. Further, the open architecture of VT can take advantage of any local or network drive for content, so users can create and save content anywhere on the network. Multi-format support means VT can load and play a multitude of file formats, including avi, mpeg, jpeg, psd and Targa. This means content can be created in nearly any existing video or graphics application without needing to convert or re-render before use.
About NewTek
With headquarters in San Antonio, NewTek is a leading provider of full-featured video editing, animation and special effects tools. The company's products are used worldwide on projects ranging from home video to feature film. Additional information about NewTek is available online at http://www.newtek.com.
About Intel
Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking, and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available in the Intel Press Room, http://www.intel.com/pressroom.
