Help me design a TV Studio!

[northernmunky]

Hi
I'm designing a TV studio for a school... nothing too flash (we spend too much money on an audio suite so the TV studio will be on a budget!), three camera setup and a bit of greenscreen work... mostly it will be used for dance events, music performances and mock news broadcasts and piped into a MacPro and streamed live and podcasted. I'm also considering BoinxTV for the students to create news broadcasts with.

This is my 'beta' design... I just threw this together in 5mins so of course its not perfect but can anyone who's more familiar with studio setups recommend any changes I should be making or recommend any cool stuff I should be doing?

Thanks all in advance!
I'll alter and update it as I go along...

I'm looking for recommendations for capture card (the Blackmagic seems a bit overkill to me), preview monitor, we already have a Canon XH A1, so I decided it made sense to get two more of the same. Not sure what some of the ports on that mixer are even meant to do yet...

 

[Consultant]

Studio tripod with wheels and fluid heads
Studio lighting
Sound proofing (or heavy rugs at right places)
Secure storage / security
Blackout curtains
Backup / archive storage

 

[ChemiosMurphy]

If you are going to get HD cameras, get an HD switcher. The edirol one you have is only SD. I have used the Sony Anycast and it is great, but it needs SDI for HD.

The big things is, decide if you want to do HD. DV over Firewire sucks for keying stuff since it's 4:1:1 chroma subsampling, so stay away from that. The plasma screens and JVC HD preview screen will be OVERKILL if you are doing SD, and they will not look right since they are progressive screens. Get CRT screens if you are staying SD, it will save you a lot of pain later, and $$.

But for green screening, i STRONGLY suggest you get a switcher that does it for you, or else you will need to ingest the footage into final cut uncompressed, or prores with a capture card. DV files suck at keying. Remember, keying is TOTALLY DEPENDENT on your lighting.

RCA BNC= composite, which isn't too good. You will lose a percentage of your signal's sharpness and brightness. We use an Anycast where i work, and if we have long cable runs, we have to recapture the cams tape and multicam it.

Get us a budget and then we can help you more in depth with stuff like lights, tripods, preview screens, decks, software, streaming hardware, etc.

 

[northernmunky]

If you are going to get HD cameras, get an HD switcher. The edirol one you have is only SD. I have used the Sony Anycast and it is great, but it needs SDI for HD.

The big things is, decide if you want to do HD. DV over Firewire sucks for keying stuff since it's 4:1:1 chroma subsampling, so stay away from that. The plasma screens and JVC HD preview screen will be OVERKILL if you are doing SD, and they will not look right since they are progressive screens. Get CRT screens if you are staying SD, it will save you a lot of pain later, and $$.

But for green screening, i STRONGLY suggest you get a switcher that does it for you, or else you will need to ingest the footage into final cut uncompressed, or prores with a capture card. DV files suck at keying. Remember, keying is TOTALLY DEPENDENT on your lighting.

RCA BNC= composite, which isn't too good. You will lose a percentage of your signal's sharpness and brightness. We use an Anycast where i work, and if we have long cable runs, we have to recapture the cams tape and multicam it.

Get us a budget and then we can help you more in depth with stuff like lights, tripods, preview screens, decks, software, streaming hardware, etc.

Hi, thanks for the input.. I looked into the Sony Anycast.. I just happen to have visited a studio just last week using one but with it being HD only will probably present a problem if we need to switch formats for whatever reason (although I am swaying towards it!).

The Edirol V-440HD at £6466 (considerably higher price than the V-8 at about £1000) looks like the only other option and it's SD+HD. We haven't got an official budget yet but it will be incredibly low (credit crunch, y'know) but the max I'm expecting is along the lines of £30,000.

 

[puckhead193]

I know my college had a broadcast pix switch....I think without a budget its hard to put together a 'studio'
ChemiosMurphy had some great advice.

 

[tri3limited]

Check out tv-bay.com for used second hand equipment. You'll usually find discounted versions of what you want on there, plus sometimes you'll get lucky and find a right bargain.