Trey Morrow, USC Upstate student production assistant, operates the school’s Ross equipment.SPARTANBURG, S.C.—To reach sports fans, alumni and other supporters of USC Upstate sports, we stream a large number of sporting events and have constructed a control room inside our basketball arena for this purpose.
In this age of extremely competitive sports coverage, the most important pieces of video control gear in a control room are the production switcher and graphics system. In designing our facility, we took this into consideration when we went equipment shopping.
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The decision to go with Ross Video’s Carbonite production switcher and XPres- sion real-time motion graphics system was based on several factors including recommendations from the Atlantic Sun Conference and ESPN personnel. The A-Sun conference is currently working towards the goal of having all of its member institutions outfitted with the production capabilities to produce ESPN 3 shows, and they believe the Ross equipment gets us to that level.
Carbonite and XPression were easy to integrate with our productions for live streaming for ESPN 3 and our own in-house broadcasts. And the installation was really a breeze. Ross brought in a specialist to set up equipment, ensure everything was working properly and provide training. As we use an all-student crew and don’t offer a broadcasting program here, we depended on Ross to train the students at a level where they can create high-quality ESPN 3 productions.
We’ve found XPression to be an amazing graphics system. It’s easy to use and integrates well with our Daktronics scoreboard display system, which is a big consideration for sporting venues.
Through our partnership with ESPN 3, we have access to their creative services department for graphics, and download them using a project server and XPression. Our operator then works at prepping them prior to production. Graphics are then put into the queue and they’re ready for the TD to put them on the air. It’s really a smooth and easy process.
Carbonite’s layout provides easy access to everything.There are many macros and custom controls to make sophisticated operations user friendly. If you want to dissolve, add a graphic or take the score bug, it’s all very easy to do. In my opinion, the best feature on the Carbonite is the touchscreen. With a learning curve of no more than 30 minutes it allows a student who has never switched a television show before to produce a really smooth and professional-looking show by using the touchscreen.
This Ross package isn’t just about our ESPN 3 productions; we’re using it for our in-house and Web-streamed productions too.We can do our ESPN 3 stream with all their branding through Carbonite and at the same time send a separate signal to our video boards without the brands for a more traditional in-house look. And while this could be difficult with other equipment, Ross has made it extremely easy.
Chad Pothoff is athletics video coordinator at USC Upstate and has been with that organization since 2012. He may be contacted atcpothoff@uscupstate.edu.
For additional information, contact Ross Video at 613-652-4886 or visitwww.rossvideo.com.
