The Most Needed Training series of the year: Newtek Live Story creator

In April of 2019, NewTek announced a new tool for select Tricaster models that could change how many used the switching and streaming powerhouse. Live Story Creator is at its most basic level a teleprompter tool that allows for NDI output or can be used as an input into the Tricaster. At its most advanced application, Live Story Creator can revolutionize your workflow and serve as a full automation tool. 

I could not wait to get my hands on Live Story Creator when it was announced and once I did, I have to admit that I was really let down. It wasn’t something that NewTek did but more what I couldn’t do. I could not for the life of me figure out how to actually make it do the really cool things. I wanted to be able to streamline my workflow and make our production experience more replicate that of the professionals. 

If you don’t know, there aren’t 10-15 people working on news shows in major markets any more. In 2016, I went to WSB in Atlanta for the first time to be a fly on the wall during one of their newscasts. I entered the vast expanse of a control room with stadium seating and four or five rows of areas for people to work and realized that there was not going to be the hustle and bustle of a newsroom that I experienced in the past including in my classroom. Instead, there was a director, a master control operator and a producer. In the studio was the talent - anchor, weather, sports - and one other person to help with tech needs like teleprompter. Everything else was 100% automated. From the camera moves to the graphics, everything was simply programmed prior to the show and ran without any true operators. 

I was super excited about Live Story Creator because I thought it may be able to do a lot of the same things that I saw at WSB. I just could not figure it out. I knew it worked off a word document and required comments on the document to make it work. I didn’t know what the comments were or how to actually apply them. I didn’t have a ton of time to get in there and dig around so I gave up. I justified it with “I need more things for the students to do anyway.” 

Yesterday, I was stoked to see that, Tricaster Guru and Trainer ex Kane Peterson posted a link to the “Live Story Creator In-Depth course” on several social media sites. This course is a part of the NewTek University series, which I can not recommend enough if you are using a Tricaster. The Live Story Creator In-Depth course is free! That’s right Free… no strings attached. Sign up for the course and it’s yours. I haven’t completed it yet but in the first section, I learned more about Live Story Creator than I have in the last 3 years. 

Here is the link to the course: https://newtek.learnupon.com/store/3043227-live-story-creator-in-depth?fbclid=IwAR0hFfCXZuDGoooZvQ28Et58TB5lg_HQPrTJO_1rboaN8r100VZpMQy_Bho 

While you are there, go ahead and check out the other NewTek courses. If you are an educator, you can take the courses for free and the certification exams at a reduced cost. I took the Live Production with Tricaster course last summer and it was great. To take advantage of the free courses for educators, send an email from your official education email account to ntu@netwek.com

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Meet the Author, Tom White

Tom White is the Broadcast Engineer at Grady College of Journalism and Communication at the University of Georgia. Prior to that role, Tom taught at Morgan County High School and Rockdale Career Academy where he and his student produced thousands of live streams for sports, news, and community events. Tom’s program at the Rockdale Career Academy received the NFHS Network Program Of The Year in 2016 and his program at Morgan County High School received the New Program of the Year title in 2018. Tom has been a long time contributor to many publications and is the host of Teaching to The Test Pattern Podcast.

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