NBC Streams Olympic Wrestling Trials

From this press release:

The TriCaster will be used to stream the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Wrestling live from the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas June 13th through 15th.

Coverage of this event will feature competitions in 18 separate Olympic wrestling weight classes in three distinct Olympic styles (men’s freestyle, men’s Greco-Roman, and women’s freestyle) on the program for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The live web cast, hosted by veteran wrestling announcers Van Stokes and Scott Casber, will be seen on NBCOlympics.com at 5:00 pm PST each day.

“While the finals of this event are being taped and broadcast on June 22nd on MSNBC, the most enthusiastic wrestling fans will be able to see all the qualifying action live this weekend” said Philip Nelson, SVP Strategic Development, NewTek. “TriCaster’s portability and ease of use is giving USA Wrestling the chance to deliver this live, extended coverage of the United States Olympic Team Trials to a worldwide audience.”

Official Lightwave3D Contest

Contest begins June 6, 2008 - Entries accepted beginning July 1, 2008

Grand Prize:
1 Full license of LightWave 3D Includes FREE upgrades for 5 years to this license
1 Full copy of SpeedEDIT™
3D Content Pack: Sports Theme
Desktop Images Visual FX Series Training Series
1 NewTek Baseball cap
1 Limited Edition LightWave T-shirt

TriCaster 2.0 Upgrade Hands On Review

I've been using TriCaster 2.0 upgrade software on my TriCaster Studio for a week or so and I've got to say it's a nice update. NewTek has listened to the users and have tweaked a whole bunch of things. They haven't changed so much that users will need to be retrained but they've fix a lot of little bothersome things in the interface.

Little things: the misnamed VCRs are now DDRs Digital Disk Recorder, still misnamed (they don't record just play) but at least we don't have to explain that no there aren't any video cassettes involved. The record and stream buttons are larger and the labels are more legible and for the original TriCaster you get the record time counter that the rest of the TriCaster Line has had all along. The interface now sports a new Ext option for the overlay. This is primarily to support LiveText. I'll cover LiveText at a later date once I've got my hands on it.

You can also record the main output back to the hard drive but it now uses a high data rate MPEG2 format that is compatible with everything from Final Cut Pro to Sony Vegas. You also have the option of recording the Effects bus rather than the main out. This is to support the TimeWarp replay controller so you can do a camera iso.

TriCaster 2.0 includes the new Edit Text tab with a full blown Character Generator with which you can create titles for use in either the video editor or in a live switch. You can even create scrolls and crawls now. The CG is easy to use, it works just like the CG in VT[5] but the interface has been improved a little.

The editor has a lot of under-the-hood improvements. The big changes here include support for HD clips and color wheel color correction. You can render your project for use during live productions (with alpha channels even) of course but also for iPods, PSP, MPEG2 for DVDs, Flash and WMV.

The TriCaster 2.0 software also includes a standard VFW driver so you can use whatever third party streaming encoder you want so if you just must have RealMedia you can. It is also flexible about your monitor resolution, even supporting wide screen displays.

The Upgrade for the TriCaster Pro is priced higher than for the other models because you are getting upgraded to the equivalent of the ProFX with LiveSets and LiveMatte. The TriCaster 100 doesn't get the LiveSets or LiveMatte but gets almost all the other features though it still won't be able to stream and record at the same time.

All in all this is a good upgrade and well worth the money unless you just use a bare minimum of the TriCaster's features. The upgrade lists for $495 for The TC 100, ProFX and Studio and $995 for the TriCaster Pro. Call us for our price. (1-800-692-6442).

...You Can Dodge a Ball

See this post Opportunities Abound and Part One.

Part one had some sports ideas but for the wedding guy how about Fashion shoots for the Bride, she paid six grand for the dress and all anyone in the church is going to get a good look at is the back of it. SloMo, SoftFocus, Fantasy Locations (did someone say virtual set?) let Uncle Charlie with his Digital8 camera match that.

Switch the ceremony live (or edit on your laptop) and show highlights at the reception. If you're going to edit, tapeless camcorders are the way to go. If your switching the thing live anyway you might as well stream it so the family on the other coast can see it even if they can't afford the flight.

In general move upscale, everyone has a camcorder and every computer that leaves WalMart has editing software installed, you can't compete with that by lowering your prices. This goes for a lot of the event videography gigs, if you set up a single camera in the back of the hall for the dance recital your video is going to be a snooze and the parents aren't going to pop thirty bucks for it. You've got to add production value.

Funerals are another growth market for streaming. Team up with the local funeral homes, they can do the marketing and billing for you. Making it a pretty simple gig.

More ideas as they pop into my head.

If You Can Dodge a Wrench...

After my post Opportunities Abound last week I started thinking. There really are lots of opportunities out there if you think outside the box a little. I've got several customers complaining their wedding business is drying up. In some places a lot of the traditional corporate work is disappearing or going to lower budgets at best. So what's a guy to do when his bread and butter work gets thin on the ground? To mix a metaphor.

Sports - The world is sports crazy. If you have seen the movie Dodgeball you'll remember "The Ocho" (ESPN 8) well, I looked into doing an alternate sports streaming web site and I found web sites devoted to every sport I could think of. So find an under served sport (and you should use this term loosely) go for it. Speed Chess might just be the next Texas Hold'em - you never know.

My town has a semi-pro football team, I'm trying to cut a deal to stream their games. I'm probably not going to get rich but I bet I can sell advertising on the web site and it will raise my visibility locally for sure.

Demo reels for high school athletes seeking college scholarships. Parents shoot footage of games you edit highlight reels. Well healed parents hire you to attend games and shoot footage to then edit into highlight reels. Hint: get several parents to chip in towards your fee. Throw in a few interview segments to show how well rounded the athlete/scholar is and impress the recruiters.

To be continued...

An interesting Idea

Ted Ruiz a long time VT and TriCaster user postulates on a couple of different forums that one way that some independent film makers might be able to get their movies made would be to do multi-camera, live switched shoots. This could reduce costs etc.

An interesting idea and it sure triggered some interesting conversation on both NewTek's forum and Yahoo Groups. My favorite comment (emphases added):

"...Every single shot of a film is in and of itself of piece of art. If
you have ever shot a film or been on set you would quickly realize the reason your senses come alive in the theater is becasue of the pains taking appoach to each and every shot, angle, line of dialouge, lighting, lenses, etc, etc, etc..."
Chris Skala
LifeStyle Video

I guess I go to the wrong movies!

Surprise SpeedEDIT Update 1.5.5

According to John Perkins over at NewTek:

"It is an incremental update to SE 1.5.1, so you should have the 1.5.1
update installed first.

It fixes several file reading problems
Fixes NTSC DVCam (Sony SD) MXFs
Fixes MXF audio problems on files over 2GB.
It fixes several MPEG reading/seeking/file length problems.
It adds support for TriCaster 2.0 projects
Adds an optimized reader for the TriCaster 2.0 I-Frame MPEG capture format."

Just thought you all should know. You can download it from Register.newtek.com as usual.