Esports in Education
New Esports in Education book shows how student broadcasters are finding careers in esports! Esports is an interesting new sport where students are competing at the high school and college levels nationally. At the high school level, esports players are not only competing to win tournaments but also to gain scholarships to prestigious universities.
Tom White Unboxes the New V-600UHD from Roland
Our favorite sports editor/reviewer Tom White is at it again! Let's watch as he unboxes the newest product from Roland, the V-600UHD, perfect for the academic market.
#SpaghettiGate2019
SpaghettiGate2019 was on! We got a little bit of a pop of the first hit in the show, and when we returned after the Thanksgiving holiday, the full-court press was on! We did hits every day about SpaghettiGate2019, including one day where we did look lives from outside the office of every administrator in the building and a conference room where a "called meeting" was in session.
Sophomore Slump: 2020 Vision
2020 Vision is going to be the most cliche thing of the year. That and the “roaring 20’s.” I want to share my vision for 2020, which is to inspire something in you. My goals are not for everyone. I don’t know that I would even call these goals. I hope that I make progress in building my program. That’s it. I want to build my program. The plan is the key…
Try a Tripod
A tripod's purpose can be described in the famous Three S Theory, which I just made up. Tripods keep it Steady, keep it Straight and keep it Smooth. Put a camera on a tripod and it will be steady. It won't bob, wave or float, assuming it's locked down. It will sit there like a rock until you get ready to move it. That's steady.
The Flimsy Shirt and Tipsy Tripod
This saying is true in many areas of life, including visual storytelling. Our tools extend beyond our cameras, lights, and microphones to the various tips and tricks that we acquire along the road of practice made perfect. These useful techniques become the difference between knowledge and experience, which yields wisdom. To this effect, here are some helpful hints that might assist you in becoming a little better with your tools.
Right Where I Need to Be
Long-time, no talk. A lot has changed since my last School Video News blog post, which was a prompt and now, slightly cringy summary of my first semester of college at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in Phoenix, Arizona. I am now a junior, nearly three full years in, and I feel I owe you a timeline to fill in the rather extensive gap.
The Roland V-600UHD: Big Bang With Big Potential
On the surface, the V-600UHD is a standard switcher. Eight channels of video, a T-bar, audio meters, and of course the cut and auto buttons that are standard issue with all switchers. On the back, there are 4 HDMI and 2 SDI inputs paired with audio in. As for outputs, you have 1 SDI out, three HDMI outs, of course a multi view out and a pair of XLR outputs for audio. Again, pretty standard stuff… But just like frosty, there is a lot of magic under that hat.
Veteran’s Day Documentary - Part 3 - Ken Burns
To say that Ken Burns is a hero to me would be an understatement. Just take a look at his collection of documentaries over the years, and you will see that he is probably one of the most significant historical filmmakers of all time. Getting his attention just a few years after we started producing documentaries at our school was a career highlight for me and a pretty unforgettable teaching moment for our students.
Veteran’s Day Documentary - Part 2 - Behind the Scenes
You know the reasons I believe producing a class documentary about a local veteran can be one of the most exciting experiences for students. In summary, it pushes their script writing abilities, drives them to the edge of their technical limits, and tells a story that captures the attention of the community. Having shared why we produce stories about local veterans, I thought I would take time in this article to share the nuts and bolts of how we use a collaborative workflow to create them.
Best Sound for Live Production, Shooting Indoor Sports
Because of the crowd noise that reverberates within the building, it can be extremely difficult to capture quality audio for indoor sports. The sample setups shown here are for basketball but are easily adapted to other indoor sports.
Company Profile: Conference Room Systems (CRS)
CRS (Conference Room Systems) is an ecommerce company offering a curated selection of audiovisual solutions for any organization. The parent company to CRS, Haverford Systems Inc., has been working within the audiovisual arena for more than 30 years as a Phila.-area installer and integrator. Following that legacy, CRS knew that they could also help DIY (do-it-yourself) customers across the U.S. With well-known manufacturers featured on its site, including Cambridge Sound Management, HuddleCamHD, PTZOptics and Magewell, CRS proudly offers the right balance of high-quality and affordability.
Learn How Schools Can Stream Esports Tournaments
During the 2019 StreamGeeks Summit, a three-versus-three RocketLeague esports tournament took place. The event was live-streamed by a student-run team from New York City’s S.A.R High School and broadcast to Twitch. The student-run broadcast team used a Wirecast Gear video production system, which was connected to three PTZOptics cameras via SDI and seven gaming computers using NDI. The main PTZOptics camera was a 12X ZCam connected via SDI. This camera was used to capture the play-by-play announcer team from Hofstra University. Students from the S.A.R High School also had access to two PTZOptics 20X-SDI cameras they could remotely control using Wirecast and Xbox controllers to capture various views throughout the esports tournament.
Why Can’t I Live Stream to Facebook?
If you’ve tried to stream to Facebook recently and encountered an error on your encoder, you’re not alone! At the beginning of May, Facebook started rolling out a new streaming protocol called RTMPS. As of November, the new protocol took full effect. Previously, Facebook - like nearly every other CDN - used the RTMP protocol for live streaming. Consequently, up until Facebook announced its update, most live streaming encoders were only designed to support RTMP. So, if your encoder is suddenly unable to stream to Facebook, you likely have Facebook’s streaming protocol to blame.
How AI Will Revolutionize Youth Sports Broadcasting
The director of sales at Pixellot, Charles Prichard, is convinced that there is a tendency that AI will automatically increase production to make sure that youth sports is cost-effective.
Sophomore Slump: Wait! What?
Here’s the deal. This semester, I had less than 20 students total. Before you go all “I have 348 kids in each class and only have 1 chair and 2 8mm cameras,” I am building a new program. Last year, I am fairly certain I had the highest failure rate in the southeast United States. When you have that, it’s hard to come back the next year and have a huge class load and still have kids progress through the system.
Shoot for the Edit
The first rule of shooting b-roll, BRING A TRIPOD! Yes they are bulky and a pain to carry and setup, but no one is the “human Steadicam.” Unless you have to shoot off of your shoulder, such as the sidelines of a sporting event where someone could get hurt running into a tripod and camera, don’t. Nothing says amateur like shaky video.
Get Thee to a Support Group
It’s certainly something that William Shakespeare could have taken a page from 400 years ago. Instead, he brought us characters who engaged in wicked swordplay, poisoning, spreading scandals, thwarting romance and duplicitously conniving for riches…and that was just within their own families. How very different those lives might have turned out if they could have availed themselves of a professional sounding board; specifically, a trained psychotherapist to help them sort out their feelings prior to acting on them.
Do Not Fear Color
Up thru the 1990’s TV broadcasters needed to be timid about colors because the analog TV technology produced such unreliable results. One brand of cameras produced acceptable cool colors and earthy tone but throw a yellow or red at them and the TV set would look as though the image was on fire, while another brand could tame the tearing red, but washout the remaining parts of the color wheel. But we’ve come a long way.
What Your Students Need To Know Before Leaving The Video Program
To make sure that they could leave my class at the end of the semester equipped to handle film school or the professional set, I distributed this survey and adjusted my projects as needed. This truly helped give me a better perspective into what my students had attained in earlier classes, and what knowledge needed more reinforcement. I hope it will help you improve your program as much as it helped me improve mine!