Test Bench: NewTek TriCaster Portable Live Production System
Videomaker by Bruce Coykendall 
New Tech Dawn In the last haven of analog video--the mid market regional TV station--we grafted into a well-equipped 3 Betacam production studio the little NewTek that could. Our goal: to observe if the time had finally arrived when the balance of broadcast power was truly in the hands of the proletariat (people without tons of money). 5, 4, 3, 2, 1Â…Dang, I've Got a Production Studio For a mere $5k, the TriCaster from NewTek is a full multi-source production suite, a post-production editor and Webcaster, and it works. NewTek describes the TriCaster as a tool for live event production and presentation for corporate, church or educational genres. Which it fulfills, but that is selling the TriCaster and other video producers a bit short. The TriCaster has three camera inputs each with Y/C (S-video) and composite to choose from. Prerecorded video can be captured via FireWire or analog to be edited and or played off the hard drive in real time. There are two mic level inputs and a left and right unbalanced (RCA) line input for audio. Outputs include headphone, line, composite and Y/C out, as well as a VGA monitor/projector output and a RJ-45 port (Ethernet) for Internet streaming. Running XP Pro, the TriCaster has 120GB internal storage for approximately 6 hours of .avi video. It's officially a new era in live multi-cam production with the introduction of TriCaster--a multi-camera studio that'll fit in the trunk of your car and costs just a few month's worth of gas to fill it up. read more...
New Tech Dawn In the last haven of analog video--the mid market regional TV station--we grafted into a well-equipped 3 Betacam production studio the little NewTek that could. Our goal: to observe if the time had finally arrived when the balance of broadcast power was truly in the hands of the proletariat (people without tons of money). 5, 4, 3, 2, 1Â…Dang, I've Got a Production Studio For a mere $5k, the TriCaster from NewTek is a full multi-source production suite, a post-production editor and Webcaster, and it works. NewTek describes the TriCaster as a tool for live event production and presentation for corporate, church or educational genres. Which it fulfills, but that is selling the TriCaster and other video producers a bit short. The TriCaster has three camera inputs each with Y/C (S-video) and composite to choose from. Prerecorded video can be captured via FireWire or analog to be edited and or played off the hard drive in real time. There are two mic level inputs and a left and right unbalanced (RCA) line input for audio. Outputs include headphone, line, composite and Y/C out, as well as a VGA monitor/projector output and a RJ-45 port (Ethernet) for Internet streaming. Running XP Pro, the TriCaster has 120GB internal storage for approximately 6 hours of .avi video. It's officially a new era in live multi-cam production with the introduction of TriCaster--a multi-camera studio that'll fit in the trunk of your car and costs just a few month's worth of gas to fill it up. read more...
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