Using Wirecast For High School News and Live Productions

With the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, schools had to immediately close down and turn to remote learning. Whitney High School's broadcast media class were faced with many new challenges during this time. With everyone remote learning, they had to find a way to continue to communicate with their classmates. And with the unknown future for the fall semester, the students are already working on how to overcome any future challenges they might face when the school year starts this fall. 

 A lot of things has changed and will be changing for the upcoming school year. Live events will not be the same. For example, sports games might be allowed, but an audience might not be. This means the broadcast class will have to deliver the best possible experience for remote viewers. Even though school might be meeting in person, their daily morning show, Unleashed, might not be able to take place live because of staggered schedules. 

 Whitney High School's award-winning daily broadcasts, Unleashed, uses a variety of equipment to make their show possible.  Telestrem Wirecast play a huge part in their production. The class plans to utilize the ability to bring in Zoom feeds directly into Wirecast. This will help the show look and feel the same as it did in their studio.

"The studio cameras are switched by a Black Magic ATEM switcher, while NewBlue Titler Live is used to supply lower thirds and other title sequences. Telestream’s ScreenFlow software is used to capture social media contributions from students which feature prominently in the program. All of these sources are fed into Telestream Wirecast, some of it live over the network via NDI, where it is then recorded to disk for a slightly delayed broadcast. Wirecast is also used to key green screen content for the weather segment."

Alan Repech - eSchool News 

"Wirecast is the hub of the operation. Not only does it bring all the elements together, it also encodes the final output and delivers it to ESE Networks, our hosting service provider.”

Ben Barnholdt, Whitney High School's Broadcast Media Teacher 

Unleashed is meant to look and feel live, and Ben Barnholdt's class succeeded that in their remote show when they were broadcasting from their homes. With the uncertainty of if they will have to be doing remote productions this fall, Barnholdt is confident that they will be able to do the whole show live and this his students can rise to the challenge of remote production if it ever creeps up on them again. 

“The technology is there, and we already have everything we need. However, it’s going to require a great deal of patience and creative thinking. For example, we’ll need to come up with a way to do intercom communication so that directors can communicate with everyone on a back channel to make sure things flow and people know when their segment is about to go live. These are all things we will need to work through.”

Ben Barnholdt, Whitney High School's Broadcast Media Teacher 

Check out the original article here!

Learn more about Telestream here!