Video is a Hard nut to crack!

Over the past 9 months, I have been working very hard to improve the live video recordings of the Geek News Central Podcast. Having no video recording background, I am sure I am making a huge number of mistakes.

As I move forward I know that I need to make some enhancements to lighting, and replace a couple of the cameras I am using. While money does not grow on trees, you sometimes wish it would! When you are trying to improve a video production it is not cheap.

The wall cam as I call it, is an old Sony HI-8 camera. While It has worked great to this point I can tell that the optics are failing, because the color output is just simply not right. While I have two pro Sony cameras in the studio that work great the shooting angle is not perfect because my beloved monster flat screen monitor is messing up the shot.

I have gotten pretty good in running the Tricaster LC-11 Switcher without looking at it, but the process is not perfect. One thing is for sure there are way to many computers needed to make sure everything works like it should.

• Tricaster for the 4–6 Camera Video Routing and Flash Stream.
• Dedicated Machine to record the Audio Portion of Podcast.
• Computer on secondary network connection to monitor live stream.
• Show computer that contains my work flow for the podcast.

This many machines on in the confined space has increased the heat and noise levels which pose there own issues. Luckily I was thinking ahead when I configured everything and the Tricaster Studio has great ventilation some other machines are not so lucky.

Overall I would say that I am 1/3^rd of the way to getting the Video Quality to where I want it to be. I figure to get all of the lighting, cameras, in place to make that happen will be about $10k.

My goal this month is to source a HDD DVR that I can use to record the shows in addition to the Tricaster recordings so that I can keep the playback hours down on the Tricaster. The plan is to buy a HDD DVR that can connect via firewire to a PC and act as the Video source for the show replays.

Bottom line here, If your a Video wizzard and live in the Honolulu area I would love to have you out to the studio to let you tell me all the things I am doing wrong. Meanwhile I will continue to push through at a steady pace.