Reprinted from the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of Church Production Magazine
Video Review: NewTek TriCaster Broadcast
NewTek, the company that brought us the Emmy award-winning Amiga Video Toaster in the 1990s, sets out to provide video producers with an all-in-one video control room in a box. NewTek TriCaster covers all of the main areas of video production, including live switching, video capture, audio mixing, nonlinear editing and project distribution via Internet streaming or standard definition video outputs. While primarily designed to be a mobile unit, serving the needs of remote video shoots, TriCaster also offers some possible solutions for small- and medium-sized churches looking for an affordable, user-friendly entry into multi-camera video production. This unit can see the production of a service or event video through to just short of actually burning the final DVD.
NewTek offers five models of TriCaster to meet varying production and budget needs. A side-by-side comparison of features on the company’s website will help zero in on the best model for a particular ministry’s needs. The most simplified and inexpensive version, TriCaster DUO, runs $2,995 and is only available to educational facilities. From there, the prices run from $4,995 to $11,995. Differences include the quantity of video and audio inputs, choosing from either three- or six-camera inputs, live virtual sets, two or four mic inputs and hard drive capacity. Only the top model, TriCaster BROADCAST, has a preview out for an external monitor. For this review, I worked with BROADCAST.
Setup
TriCaster comes with a very helpful quick-start guide that gets setup and basic operations underway, though more configuration diagrams would have been helpful. Cameras plug right into the BNC inputs, either directly or with adapters, and a few input setup options have them up and running within a few minutes. I ran my tests with an assortment of cameras, from a simple one-chip consumer camcorder to a new prosumer HD camera. I also field-tested the unit in our church video room by plugging our three Y/C camera lines into TriCaster, which then configured the inputs using the camera’s color bars. Audio is just as fast, accommodating a line from a mixer or an assortment of mics. You provide the monitor, and a video mixer with a T-bar controller is available for $995.
TriCaster does not feature digital inputs for live switching, such as the FireWire media cables common in digital camcorders. But NewTek has a reason for this. A digital video signal making its way through the Windows operating system and then the switcher would take up to eight frames to reach the program output. This would create a synchronization problem in live and IMAG presentations. Analog signals, on the other hand, take about two or three frames, which most people don’t notice.
TriCaster runs on Windows XP Pro, but after logging on, the machine goes directly to the switcher, with access to the Windows operating system through the Admin management utility. This lets the user focus on video production rather than computer issues, such as the temptation to play FreeCell, while still making options like installing Photoshop and other graphics programs possible.
Live Production
Most of the action happens on the Live Production interface, where the live presentations are created in real-time. For a three-camera shoot, the video source display is made up of the three cameras, an exterior computer input, two digital disc recorders (DDRs), a background and black. A great feature here, and a reason for a black box taking up valuable space, is the interactive capabilities of these screens. One click puts the source into preview, and the next click makes it live. Double-clicking a screen quickly makes that source live. Many will find this to be a highly intuitive way to work. A technical director needing to make rapid cuts can focus on just this part of the screen, clicking away at the desired sources.
In six-camera mode, a quad display shows the two DDRs, an external source and the waveform vectorscope. If it is necessary to monitor all six cameras full-time, an external setup would need to be added. This makes TriCaster less of an option as a permanent video room switcher. The full-time individual camera monitors on screen are small, making it difficult to evaluate focus, and there is no through signal to patch in larger exterior monitors. The video signal could pass through monitors before terminating in the TriCaster, but this would eat up some of the quality. Such monitors, however, would be cumbersome on a remote shoot, which is mainly what TriCaster is designed for.
TriCaster comes with 200 transitions that can be sorted and arranged in a set of five banks. The speed of the transitions can be adjusted or run in reverse, but that’s about it for customization. Even the graphically heaviest transitions load up almost instantly, and range from simple wipes and 3D trajectories to animation and effects.
Titling
While there is an entirely separate screen for editing text and graphics, a simple but handy character generator is available on the switcher. Here existing templates can be edited quickly during a live production. This can be very handy in situations where the name of the speaker needs to be put on screen at the spur of the moment. TriCaster comes equipped with a wide assortment of lower-third graphics, overlays and full-screen titles to work with. These can be further customized in the Text Edit screen, where new titles and templates can be created as well.
Another titling option is NewTek LiveText, remote titling and graphics software that is operated independently of TriCaster on another computer. It communicates directly with TriCaster during a live production so another operator can provide the technical director with titles and graphics during a live production. This would make for an efficient IMAG setup. The additional software runs $995.
Existing video clips can be played back during a live recording using the two DDR players. Each can hold an extensive playlist, and can play back selections or the entire list. When a clip is cued, the switcher will transition to the start of the clip and transition back out at the end, seamlessly editing in the entire clip.
Chromakey in TriCaster is clean and easy. A green or blue screen composite can be created quickly in LiveMatte, where a selected color is automatically keyed out. Plenty of fine-tuning controls are available as well. LiveSet can put your subject into a virtual set, several of which are packaged with the program.
The switcher can record right onto the hard drive or stream content live over the Internet. The top three models can do both simultaneously. The hard drive can hold up to 20 hours of DV-quality video, with the option of expanding that with external hard drives. The live event can be outputted to an SD video device, a VGA projector, or LCD display.
Audio
A section of the switcher is devoted to a small soundboard that is simplified enough for a busy technical director to operate live, but with enough controls to achieve a good mix. Global EQ and volume controls affect the overall sound of the live video, while each source has its own set of controls on an advanced tab. The microphone inputs feature a Talk Over button that quickly reduces the volume of the other inputs, giving that microphone level priority.
Editing
The TriCaster has video capture and editing capabilities along the lines of consumer editing programs like iMovie or Pinnacle. It can capture real-time analog or digital video with deck control for DV sources. While TriCaster can edit high definition video, HDV cannot be exported over FireWire. The editing program is designed for preparing video clips for live production and for putting the finishing touches on the productions captured to the hard drive.
Additional titles and picture-in-picture effects can be added, unwanted segments cut and audio cleaned up. All of the transitions and graphics available for live productions can be accessed here as well. An efficient workflow for a ministry would be to shoot an event, saving it to the TriCaster hard drive and then take the unit to a more convenient location to edit. And while NewTek discourages installing any additional software on the Windows PC, the installation of a DVD authoring program and external burner to Windows could conceivably be done to generate a master DVD from one production system.
Conclusion
An advanced video ministry for a large church would be best suited with a switcher that can be expanded to handle more inputs, offer a greater range of configurability, and that can accommodate full-time external monitors for all the inputs. But there are a lot of possibilities with the TriCaster for smaller, tighter-budgeted churches or ministries that do a lot of mobile shooting. The unit is certainly great for those with space issues. The video department can nestle itself in the control room between the light board and the sound crew with some space left over for the coffee maker. And after the service, the entire unit can be relocated for a youth event or taken home by the editor. The simplification of the controls would even be an advantage to ministries with weekend video artists who only have time to learn the basic controls. NewTek has created a powerful tool that enables ministries and video departments to create professional-quality video for DVD, television and Internet streaming.
Michael Parks heads up the video ministry at Hilltop Community Church in Richmond, Calif. He has been involved in film and video production for 25 years and is the author of the blog “Close-Up on One” at www.churchproduction.com/michaelparks.