Columbia College Chicago, the largest private arts and media college in the U.S., has selected file-based video clip management software from EVS (www.evs.tv) to streamline the production process and help train media students on board a HD remote production truck.
The college's School of Media Arts' Television Department began its transition from a VTR environment to a tapeless workflow last fall, with the goal of having the complete new system in place by this summer. In total, four XT[2] servers, two XS servers and their software controllers and content management systems including IPDirector, Insio and LSM controllers have been installed in the new training facilities (which includes new studios). The system is now being used for integrated studio production operations such as multifeed ingest, clip creation, media network management, live editing and media transfer to post production in tapeless mode.
Among the products installed on board the production truck is EVS' ingest control and review application for multicamera recording sessions and the Insio touch-screen application in order to simplify the workflow process.
A recent live comedy show entitled "Freq Out" was recorded at the college's new media production center using the truck and the Insio technology. Students managed the entire project from scriptwriting to post production.
Video footage is ingested directly to the 6-channel XT[2] server (allowing eight audio tracks per video channel). The Insio application is used to create multiple video clips for each take during a shoot. Each clip is recorded on the XT series server via the (720p HD) Apple ProRes 422 codec. All unclipped material remains available on the server's recording train, offering security to the production team.
Operators can transfer clips created on the XT servers directly to XF2 removable disks storage platforms (based on SATA storage architecture). Upon completion of the production, disks containing all footage are sent to post production for final editing on Final Cut Pro stations. With the material being natively saved in ProRes422 codec, along with audio/video and metadata media wrapped in Apple Quicktime Ref file format, editors can immediately start their montage without transcoding as well as instantly access five different camera angles and a program cut related to the same timecode.
Dave Mason, Television Department chief engineer, Columbia College Chicago, said the Insio suite of tools gave them instant access to material and was easy for the students to learn.
