Terry Heifetz, Instructor of Telecommunications and News Director at Ball State University, says the Grass Valley equipment integrates well with the Unified Media Lab’s other broadcast solutions, such as Avid, Adobe Premier, NewsCutter and iNEWS.
“On the broadcast end, we used Avid to work with News Cutter and iNews, and integrated them with Grass Valley’s control system,” he says. “Then, we integrated Grass Valley’s broadcast system to the rest of the lab and additional video with Grass Valley cameras and Ignite as the Grass Valley engine and control, along with integrating Avid into iNEWS as the rundown script in the new system.”
Juli Metzger, instructor of Journalism and Coordinator of Unified Media at Ball State University says Grass Valley worked with instructors in the Unified Media Lab for over a month to make sure each part of their solution worked.
“Jonathan Reddick [of Grass Valley] was here for three weeks, operating, running, helping us install, and that was amazing…My experience turned out to be terrific.”
– Tim Underhill, instructor, Department of Telecommunications at Ball State University
She says Grass Valley customized their solutions to the lab’s needs, and were accommodating to instructors’ scattered teaching schedules during the course of last year.
“They were here for a month for installation and training,” Metzger says. “I think it’s particularly difficult in a university setting to get faculty members who are the brain trust of the operation available for training because they’re teaching…Grass Valley had to be flexible with us, and they were.”
Underhill says Grass Valley’s broadcasting equipment has been so successful that other students outside of the journalism focus use it for their own projects.
“We started off producing the news casts that we were used to producing before, and then we saw other student organizations wanted to go and use the facility…to cover the gaming industry through a web log, for student television shows, etc.,” he says. “The cameras are easy to access and that works out for some of the shows.”
Underhill says the only downside to the equipment is the university’s draining funds.
He says if Ball State University obtains a higher budget, he wants to invest in better live-reporting technology.
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