"I use the TriCaster here because we have a lot of web content: I want to visit web sites, I want to put web video to air and things like that. Some we can prepare in time, others I prepare on this machine, either record it or just put it through the switcher; a nice blue border around it and away we go. Getting web pages to look great on television - funnilly enough it's still a great challenge - it's just the way they're created in a computer!
I find the interface we got here means we get the text nice and clear, not smeary. I can also use the local VTR here. If sometimes we've grabbed things at the last minute: here a little clip, a web page; there isn't time maybe to go to the conventional edit room and prepare it so I can just chop it up here or stack it in one of the VTR machines and I'll run it into the show. If I have a dialogue, I have a guest in and say "let's talk about this issue" I'll say well "hang on, have a look at the web site here" or "let's see what this blogger is saying" and then I'm dragging them, I prepare the sites beforehand but I drag them to content and the guys in the regular switch room cut the TriCaster to line so it's going straight out on TV. But you know I think in this era, a lot of graphics on TV - the show and tell sequences that are now commonplace on most new shows - it [TriCaster] adds a certain something. If when I say "can I show you this?" I can run it or I can cut it to air, because it means that sort of timing which can look a bit messy, just doesn't happen: I'm in control, it's down to me!
In a conventional way, you'd have had to order that graphic from somebody else, they'd have had to go and prepare it and put it in another place. Here a few clicks, a bit of typing and we're there - it's on the air! If you're used to using computer software, that's fine and the second thing is if you're anything like any kind of television professional who's used the switcher where you want to control a camera to line; a graphic; a bit of VT; a sound or video clip; that idea of cutting between them or animating it between them is familiar to all of us, we've always admired from afar the switcher guy or the switcher girl who does all that stuff and makes it happen hopefully exactly at the right time and what's fabulous about this [TriCaster] is that it brings it all to the desktop! And I don't want that job, I really don't but if I can do a little bit of it here and it means I can punctuate what I'm saying as a presenter with timely extra bits, that's great!
Martin Stanford from Sky News and NewTek TriCaster STUDIO.
Images courtesy of Sky News
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