If you were impressed when manufacturers began putting home theaters in boxes, wait until you feast your eyes on NewTek's TriCaster, which packs an entire live television production studio into a comparable cube of space. With minimal training, anyone who can operate a computer can use it to broadcast professional-quality live video over the internet or on television.
“It's basically a live TV truck in a backpack," said Philip Johnson, NewTek senior vice president of strategic development. “It's being used by everyone from the NBA [Development League], to Fox Sports, to Fox News. John Dvorak uses one for Cranky Geeks, and Leo Laporte [and Tom Green] use it."
YouTube and inexpensive cameras have already democratized video production to a large degree, of course, but the production values of many of those videos is barely ready for America's Funniest Home Videos, let alone prime time. In contrast, TriCaster enables broadcast-quality production values that's equally suited for television and for the internet.
This disruption of the normal live video production process means content attractive to niche audiences is now worth televising to local communities or streaming worldwide. “You don't have to have a million people watching," said Philips, “because the budget of making the show is almost nothing."
The TriCaster is essentially a high-powered computer with special ports. Like other computers, it plugs into a display and it's operated using a mouse and keyboard. The onscreen interface resembles a traditional TV-studio switching console, but after a short tutorial, just about anyone can figure out how to switch between cameras, add graphics and so on. I saw how easy this was, and heard countless testimonials about high schoolers and church volunteers learning how to use it in a half hour.
“We had to take a process that normally has 5 to 30 people creating a show and make it easy enough for one person to run, [someone] who has never run a TV show before," explained Philips. Indeed, the TriCaster allows a single operator to mix multiple cameras (higher-end models support more cameras) interspersed with graphics, pre-recorded clips, real-time effects and more than 300 three-dimensional transitions. The box outputs to the web, television stations or big screens in churches and sporting arenas.
NewTek's entry-level TriCaster, with support for three cameras, costs $4,000. That may seem like a lot, but considering that it can be used in place of a mobile production vehicle, four grand is small potatoes, relatively speaking.
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