Lindenwood University students operate the school's new Hitachi SK-HD1000 high-definition cameras.ST. CHARLES, MO.
Lindenwood University is a four-year liberal arts institution dedicated to excellence in higher education. We are located west of St. Louis and offer more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 14,500 students.
The school operates a television facility, with programming placement on a special Charter Communications cable channel.
We recently installed three Hitachi SK-HD1000 1080i HDTV studio/field cameras equipped with Fujinon HAs18x7.6BRM lenses in our new high-definition studio. The studio and its adjacent control room were funded by Lindenwood University and Charter Communications.
The facility operates under the supervision of the Lindenwood faculty team: Peter Carlos, station manager; Ben Scholle, department chair; and myself, with students producing virtually all of the programming seen on the special Charter channel.
PREPARING STUDENTS FOR TELEVISION FUTURES
When we began outfitting our new HD studio last August, the goal was to fill it with state-of-the-art equipment that would enable our students to move into any broadcast operation once their studies are completed. The Hitachi cameras that were selected for the project have gone well beyond our expectations of quality and reliability and have proven to be an excellent value. They are user-friendly and produce a consistently beautiful picture under varying lighting conditions.
While the high-definition studio is illuminated with a mix of tungsten and color corrected fluorescent lights, another venue, the 250-seat "Black Box Theatre," just across the hall is also used for program origination has a combination of tungsten and theatrical lighting which is controlled by a separate a dimmer package. The students occasionally move the Hitachi cameras there for game shows, band performances and other special programming. Since our new cameras are equipped with Hitachi CU-3300 camera control units for remote setup we can accommodate this change in lighting very easily and without any compromises in video quality.
CREATED FULLY EQUIPPED HD FACILITY
Our HD facility features a tapeless newsroom equipped with an Avid iNews newsroom control system, Avid AirSpeed ingest and playout server and dual-channel Avid Deko 1000 HD character generator, with Deko Select for browsing the asset library that's been created. The control room features a Grass Valley Kayak 200-C HD 2-M/E, 24-input switcher. The control room monitoring is via a 52-inch Sony LCD flatscreen display fed from a Miranda Alto multiviewer unit. Switcher auxiliary outputs are used to feed three additional 46-inch Sony monitors on the news set.
EASY INSTALLATION
With the outstanding customer support we received from Hitachi, along with that from our dealer, Bill Johnson of Modern Communications in Fenton, Mo., the whole process of evaluating, purchasing, and installing the Hitachi cameras was a breeze. When the cameras arrived, Hitachi sent a tech team here to perform check out and set up. Everything worked perfectly. The cameras are easy to set up and operate and our students find them easy to operate.
All in all the Hitachi cameras have been a good fit for our HD studio project.
Ed Voss is the director of operations at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. He may be contacted atevoss@lindenwood.edu.
For additional information, contact Hitachi Kokusai Electric America at 516-921-7200 or visitwww.hitachikokusai.us.
