We’ve recently completed renovations of the Multimedia Project Studio (MPS) West’s studio space. It was originally designed as a multipurpose space, meeting, conference and video studio, but the design proved to be too complex and it didn’t really do any one of those services exceptionally well. The new space has been designed to be a video studio space aimed at maximizing flexibility with ease of use foremost in the planning.
Over the next year, we’ll be looking closely at the use of the space to address the academic focused use cases that fall between sitting in front of your laptop’s camcorder and full, professional production services at Duke Media Services.
To kick the tires, we shot a pilot of a new show called “devilTech” – a chat show about technology here at Duke.
Interesting production bits.
For the pilot, we used the Blue Yeti microphone in Omni mode. We thought it looked cool so we kept it in the shot. It was in omni mode and did an exceptional job with the audio. However, since we were using the AV Bridge to convert our new Panasonic AW-HE60HN to USB, the resulting video was about 4 frames out of sync. Easy fix however we’ll be switching to an XLR Mic for the room to send them both through the AV Bridge moving forward.
We are loving the web based PTZ control of the Panasonic camera. This was done both for cost savings and ease of use. There’s a shortcut to the camera control website on the desktop of the room’s computer.
If anyone at Duke has some interesting technology services or stories that by sharing would benefit the greater Duke community, please contact me directly and we’ll sit down on camera and chat. I’m aiming to keep these as short as possible but do not want this to be just a forum for OIT. It hopefully will become another vehicle for all of us to share our experiences.
The MPSWEST Studio is bookable via Microsoft Exchange (just search MPSWEST Studio) so feel free to check it out anytime the library is open. Your feedback is greatly appreciated on this latest experiment in digital media!
I’m curious how you are feeding video to the Wacom Cintiq tablet. Is it a wireless connection or is there a thunderbolt/HDMI cable connected to it somehow?
Hi Eric – we have a cable running to it. There is enough slack that allows us to roll that table to the side when the studio is used in format such as the sample video “devilTech”. The Cintiq is used for Coursera MOOC courses which is generally a single person sitting at the table which is then rolled back into place.