Television Studio
The television studio is large enough to divide into two studios. The studio is a teaching space and also a working studio, with plenty of room to stage productions. In the Spring of 2015, we installed a professional news set donated by KMOV-TV in St. Louis, MO.
The TV studio converted to digital in 2003 and began the transition to HDTV in 2013. Major components included three Hitachi Z-HD5000 studio cameras capable of both 4 x 3 and 16 x 9 aspect ratios, as well as 480i (Standard Definition), and 1080i (High Definition) outputs. Each camera features TelePrompTers mounted on them for reading scripts. A Ross Carbonite 2M Multimedia production switcher with two ME banks of digital effects, an Imagine Communications Platinum MX digital router, a Chyron Lex 3.1 two-channel output character generator with Lyric software, a four-channel Avid Airspeed 5500 video server, a Mackie SRM 450 audio console, a TVQ Wincue teleprompter system, a Clearcom intercom system, and in addition to existing S-VHS, Mini-DV and DVC-Pro recording decks, two DVC Pro-50 decks, one Betacam deck and two DVD-RW decks. In addition, the production control room features two 65-inch multi-viewer monitors, and master control is equipped with an additional router station, digital waveform monitor and vectorscope, and sync generator.
The studio is equipped with an ETC digital lighting board with a full complement of 96 grid lighting dimmers. There are also special features for lighting effects. There are 96 electrical drops for lights. In addition, there are two large floor lights, additional portable tripods, C-stands, reflector panels and a wide variety of scrims and colored gels, which are used frequently in production and performance classes. There are 12 audio outlets mounted around the studio walls to connect microphones. The studio also features 20 set backgrounds, seamless paper, portrait backdrops and other prop pieces located in storage areas. The TV studio floor and adjoining Production Control Room are designed for handicapped access.
Video Editing Lab
The Department boasts a spacious Video Nonlinear Editing Lab with ten workstations running Adobe CC, connected to a 48 terabyte EVO shared storage server. Thanks to the EVO, after students begin an edit, second and subsequent sessions can be done on any other available workstation.
Older recording decks (S-VHS and U-Matic) are maintained in Master Control for dubbing purposes. All current studio production is recorded onto the Airspeed 5500, or onto tape using DVC-Pro 50, DVC Pro, Mini-DV or Betacam SP.
Field Cameras & Equipment
Cameras, tripods, microphones, mike booms, and other assorted items (adapters, fuses, soldering tools, etc.) are available for students to “check out” for course related field productions. The unit has 19 portable ENG cameras (Canon XF-300, XF-100) that use Compact Flash cards for recording media. In addition, we have three XL-2 mini-DV camcorders for normal use and one DVC Pro camcorder for special productions. We have 18 Lowel lighting kits for location lighting. The engineers sign in/out equipment to the students. There are also 9 portable audio cassette decks to be signed out for field recording.
The unit also has Nikon Digital Cameras used primarily for the Digital Imagery, Multimedia, and Photojournalism courses.
Multimedia Lab
The Department’s multimedia laboratory is located in Dunham Hall 1014, and is equipped with 16 iMac intel-based G5’s running System X. The room is a “smart classroom,” featuring A-V equipment (Elmo, video, audio, computer, etc.) tied into an overhead digital projector. The lab’s computers are replaced on a 3–to-4-year rotation, with annual software upgrades. The computers are equipped with software such as: Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Entourage); Macromedia MX (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, FreeHand); Adobe CS (PhotoShop, ImageReady, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive); QuarkXPress; Final Draft; Final Draft A-V; Safari; Explorer; Firefox; i-movie; i-DVD; i-Photo; Sound Studio; Pro Tools; Mac OS-X PDF maker; and Acrobat Reader.
Audio Lab
The department maintains four student audio production/editing laboratories. All four of these workstations have digital editing capabilities with Adobe CC, using Audition. There are two student control rooms in addition to the WSIE-FM work areas.
In addition, department audio facilities include a classroom/newsroom, which can be used as a studio and an editing lab/auxiliary console room. All these areas are used by students working on Audio Production assignments, “sweetening” audio for video projects, or working for WSIE-FM.
Production Engineers
The department’s engineers, Ben Moyer and Theresa Pauli, maintainin the equipment, do repairs to keep units in use and maintaining security of the area and equipment.