A Productive day!
With a small group of volunteers, we assembled our five new Panasonic HPX-300 P2-HD camera packages! Starting next term we’re going to be moving to HD productions and tapeless workflows.
Post production will be one one of our new Mac Pro edit suites which are loaded with both Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Studio, in addition to the Adobe suite of products to give TV & Video Production students the widest possible range of options for their post-production workflow.
The TV & Video Production program will also be shifting focus somewhat – in addition to our single-camera digital produtions (film style, but without the film!), we will be producing more live event programming (such as sporting events, theatre, music, etc).
To accomplish this, we’ve purchased a portable Broadcast Pix production package that we can take out to events to enable us to do multi-camera switched live programming. We will be looking for non-profit community events where BCIT students can bring their production skills to the project and provide clients with high quality end-products.
Exciting times!
What has been going on over the summer? New equipment and new instructors!
On the equipment side of things:
- We’re in the process of purchasing five new HD camera packages (we’re getting the Panasonic AG-HPX-300), which shoot on the P2 memory cards. This is hopefully spelling the beginning of the end of tape at BCIT. Of course these cameras will also come with all of the supporting hardware, new tripods, etc.
- We’ve also purchased 7 iMac computers. 6 for Final Cut Pro editing stations for news, and 1 for audio control 2 for playback into the News Magazine. We also purchased two 8-core Mac Pro systems for post-production on major projects (one for first year, and one for second year).
- In order to get more live-event production training, we’re getting a new Broadcast Pix portable production switcher package. The idea is that we can take this out to live events (sports, plays, non-profit, etc) so students can develop more live multi-camera production skills aside from our normal news programming
- The Facilis and Omneon server installation is progressing, and we will soon have network-accessible drives available for news and project editing. The Facilis is the “storage” server while working on your edits, while the Omneon is the “play-to-air” server that connects to the control rooms for direct digital playback (we’re phasing out tape).
All of this won’t be immediately available in September (heck, not much has actually been delivered yet). We understand students will want to play with use the new gear. Us too! But we also want to make sure everyone is properly trained in it.
What this will likely mean is “in-house” use for training purposes until we get all of the bugs/workflow resolved. Afterwards, we’ll get people using it ASAP. Some components will be rolled-out in September, some may not be available for groups or individuals to sign-out until January.
As far as instructional staff goes, Al Klein has decided to stay on as a full-time director with CityTV in Vancouver, therefore David Griffiths will be taking on the responsibilities of teaching first-year TV students with John Mills. Ashif Jivraj will be returning to BCIT Television as a full-time assistant instructor.
