Digital Media Production | News

Ball State Installs Virtual Studio for Broadcast

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/01/10

Ball State University in Muncie, IN has enhanced its broadcasting capabilities with the addition of new virtual studio installation. The university's Teleplex, which supports public broadcasting of video and radio programs and delivers video production, distance education, and captioning services, has added a studio setup that includes a rendering platform from Orad Hi Tec Systems, camera pedestals from Vinten Radamec, and hardware from Ultimatte.

The new studio will be used in student-produced nightly news and will eventually allow corporate clients to use Ball State's media support.

The Teleplex houses two broadcasting spaces, a 1,200-square-foot studio for news, and a 2,400-square-foot studio with a chroma-key green backdrop for adding virtual locations. Both spaces will be able to use the new equipment, which includes an Orad ProSet virtual studio with HDVG, a high-definition digital video graphics rendering platform; three Vinten Radamec manual encoded pedestals and pan and tilt heads for camera work; and Ultimatte blue/green screen compositing hardware for integrating the images of people in the studio against the virtual background.

"By installing a sophisticated virtual reality system featuring Orad's ProSet studio, we are able to produce our own newscasts and give them a polished, professional, and viewer-pleasing look," said Bill Cahoe, director of the Teleplex. "In addition, we now have the opportunity to train our broadcast students in the use of leading-edge technology and to market our production services to discerning commercial customers. Thus the facility has a threefold payback for the university--in education, in information, and in revenue."