NAB Perspectives: NewTek’s Philip Nelson Talks TriCaster 8000

One of the big stories coming out of NAB for the sports market is NewTek’s introduction of the new TriCaster 8000. The live production system, which is already one of the most popular live event broadcasting tools in the industry, features a bevy of upgrades and was already attracting attention from many major American sports organizations on Monday in the Lower South Hall.

Phillip Nelson, senior vice president, strategic development at NewTek, shows off the new TriCaster 8000 at the company's booth at NAB on Monday.

“The TriCaster 8000 is a technological marvel,” says Phillip Nelson, senior vice president, strategic development at NewTek, “but the most important thing that we see is technology that has social media integration into live production.”

TriCaster 8000 includes a new social media-savvy “Share” panel that allows for video clips, individual stills, or batches of ISO-grabbed frames of the live show to be distributed to multiple social media platforms, including: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr—or FTP-transferred to a directory—in a single pass.

“One of the problems in a lot of events is, you do your event, you take your content and than process it and upload it and a few hours later you have your content,” says Nelson, “but with TriCaster now, before your game is over, content is live on YouTube. That is huge and this is the future and we are the only live production system that does that.”

In addition, Nelson notes that NewTek has added in a new technology platform for TriCaster. In the 8000, which is expected to be available in Q3 2012 for a retail price of $39,995, the company has moved to a paradigm that is more broadcast-focused with its workflow.

“It actually has multiple M/Es and you can set up multiple macros,” says Nelson. “So if you are setting up a complicated effect you can save a macro so that with a single button click it actually triggers multiple events to happen.”

Audio mixing is also more flexible with the ability to delegate the process to a separate iPad control app, or one of the Avid Artist series control surfaces.

“The bottom line is, the TriCaster has always been about making a portable live production look like television and allowing people who aren’t going to roll in a truck to do a live show,” says Nelson. “So now with the new TriCaster 8000, that production value has just multipled because of the complexity of what you can do.”

NewTek also unveiled TriCaster 855 and TriCaster 455 at NAB on Monday. 855 is a facilities-class system, equipped with 24-channel switching, and inputs for up to eight cameras; five digital media players for video clips, graphics and titles, and two network channels for sharing computer screens and displays from wireless iOS devices. 455 is scaled for restricted space, including small studios, production vans, control rooms, backstage, etc. 455 includes a 14-channel switcher with four camera inputs and the production and graphics power to deliver a network-quality show from previously limiting locations. TriCaster 455 and TriCaster 855, including their corresponding control surfaces, are available immediately for a retail price of $19,995 and $29,995, respectively.