The iTV-Studio is a research and development project by the scientist, inventor, and philosopher Bob Doyle, who has been adapting consumer devices to reduce the cost of film and video tools for over forty years.

Bob likes to say he puts the means of production in the hands of the people, not by nationalizing them as Karl Marx proposed, but by making them incredibly affordable.

His goal for iTV-Studio is to build the world's lightest, most portable, and most affordable multi-camera recording and live streaming system. iTV-Studio accessories include:

• iTV-Prompter, the lightest and least expensive television prompter of its size, with iTV-Rundown program scheduling software and roll-in automation;

• iTV-TriCam and BiCam mounts that allow a single camera operator to manage multiple camera views;

• iTV-Program Monitor and Intracom, supporting headphones for program director, tech director, audio engineer, etc. and a one-way intercom to camera operators and technical assistants;

• iTV-MOS, a media object server to cue up and roll-in video files when prompted by the rundown schedule;

• iTV-Newsroom, multiple cameras on dollies (poor-man's pedestal cameras), each with three monitors and a unique approach to tally signaling;

• iTV-Multiview on-camera monitors to allow each camera operator to see the other camera views and which is on Preview, which on Program.

• iTV-Replay, a low-cost instant replay system and iTV-Playlister, to assemble the best shots during an event for playback during breaks in the play.

• iTV-Wireless Cameras and the Wireless Steadicam, for cable-free operation - including the iTV-CoachCam for on-field or on-floor interviews and the iTV-BasketCam for wide-angle views down on the basket;

• iTV-Remote- including a single camera, a laptop with NLE, and a USB monitor with synchronized iTV-Rundown on location, for a producer-reporter team contributing a live package to the iTV-Studio.

• iTV-Webcam, for remote guests via Skype or Google+, who can see all the local iTV-Studio cameras and computer screens;

• and the iTV-Van, an Outdoor Broadcast Truck with up to 16 cameras as far as 1000 feet away, to cover the largest sports venues, with as few as five camera operators using iTV-TriCam mounts (cameras can also be equipped with remote pan-tilt-zoom). The iTV-Van has multiple redundant Internet connections with failover load balancing, including wired, fiber optic, microwave bridge, and bonded cellular modems.

In the early 1970's, Bob brought professional synchronous sound shooting and editing on magnetic film to consumer-quality Super 8 movie cameras. Film schools around the world used Super8 Sound equipment, including Bob's Harvard-Radcliffe Filmmaking Workshop.

Hollywood's American Cinematographer magazine devoted the November 1975 issue to "state-of-the-art" tools and techniques for Professional Super 8 developed by Super8 Sound, which continues today as Pro8mm in Burbank, CA.

Super8 Sound was a sustaining member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and Bob was a full member of the SMPTE sound engineering committee, where he drafted the 1-pulse-per-frame sound synchronization standard. He has rejoined the SMPTE to assist with the development of live Internet television for the 21st century.

In the 1980's, Bob designed and funded low-cost, three-color-camera television studios for Brown University's BTV and Harvard University's HRTV.

In the 1990's, he launched Quad Sound Studios at Harvard, funded the start-up of Videomaker Magazine, and was the "digital video guru" of NewMedia Magazine, where he covered the transition of video from analog to digital technology with a special interest in nonlinear desktop video editing (NLE).

 

Bob and his colleague Stuart Cody developed a technique for shooting with four Hi-8 camcorders, patched though a Panasonic WJ-MX50 4-input S-video switcher for live recording onto a fifth camcorder.

He built an RC time code to SMPTE time code converter so he could re-synchronize playback of the isolated Hi-8 tapes with an 8-track TASCAM audio recorder. Any part of the event could again be switched in post to improve where cuts were made.

He and Stuart described this in a cover story for Videomaker in 1993 titled "4 Cameras in Motion, Four Camera Editing." Today this is a trivial task for a nonlinear editor with multi cam editing that automatically synchronizes media files from camcorder SD cards.

By adding a Canopus ADVC-110, Apple QuickTime Broadcaster, and Apple's Darwin Server, Bob and colleague David Pearson experimented with an early version of what he called an iTV-Studio, four PTZ cameras streaming via UStream from Bob's lab over a decade ago.

Bob's latest multi-camera development efforts put the core technology needed to produce a three- (to six-) camera television show streaming live to the Internet from a roll-about suitcase small enough to fit under an airline seat, weighing twenty-five pounds and consuming less than 60 watts of power.

Bob's current motto is "YouTube, but iTV." His new iTV-Studio tools are not needed for shows that are edited in post production. But iTV-Studio and its many accessories are the lowest-cost, easiest way to produce multi-camera live OTT television, for example sports broadcasting or news production.

Most OTT (over the top) or "TV Anywhere" streamed media is produced offline, uploaded to the Internet, and then played on demand in a nonlinear fashion. For this, you can use multiple camcorders that need not be connected. You simply remove their memory cards, import the files into a video editing program like Apple's industry-standard Final Cut Pro X. FCPX can synchronize the camera files based on their audio tracks. All the switching between cameras is done in post-production, with none of the pressure of a live event.

But much future television programming will be produced and viewed in linear "real time." Besides Livestream and Ustream, Google now offers us YouTube Live. Live internet television programs will be able to develop enormous world-wide audiences, not limited to today's local broadcast and cable outlets. Bob calls this iTV for internet television (with a lower-case italic i, not to be confused with Britain's ITV - Independent Television).

The heart of the iTV-Studio is the ATEM Television Studio, a 1U rackmount device with the state-of-the art electronics of a broadcast-quality HD switcher. It provides basic cuts, wipes, and dissolves, as well as upstream and downstream keys, but with none of the expensive mechanical buttons and faders of typical broadcast gear. All switching is done in software. You can add an electro-mechanical panel, but it increases switcher cost by about $5000.

Inside the iTV-Studio case is a 15" touchscreen laptop computer and a 16" USB monitor. The touchscreen laptop computer provides the switcher control surface, a media mixer with seven stereo input controls and a master output level control, a six-input camera-color-control interface, and a media still store. You can cut, wipe, or dissolve by touching the on-screen buttons or pressing the laptop keys.

The extended desktop on the 16" monitor lets you run other programs simultaneously, such as the playlist manager for a media object server (MOS) or a Skype session that allows remote guests in high resolution. One of the iTV-Studio HDMI inputs is connected to the HDMI output of the laptop computer.

The computer has three monitors that work together as a single extended desktop. The first is the laptop screen, the second the USB-powered monitor (these two have 1366x768 resolution), the third is one of the HDMI inputs to the iTV-Studio, with full HD 1920x1080 resolution. You can initiate a Skype or Google+ interview on the 16" monitor and then drag it to be full-screen on the iTV-Studio input (typically Camera 4 in a basic 3-camera iTV-Studio system).

Inside the lid of the iTV-Studio is a 20" HD monitor displaying the ATEM multiview screen with virtual program and preview monitors, six camera monitors, and two media still stores. Bob's original iTV-Studio in the 1990's was built on the Panasonic WJ-MX50 S-Video switcher, which cost $3500 in 1993 dollars. It had four 8" Sony CRT monitors for the cameras and two 12" monitors for preview and program. The monitors alone cost about $3000. Camcorders, then at $600, cost twice the latest low-end HD models. So the current iTV-Studio is less expensive than the original and a fraction of the weight and size.

The ATEM Television Studio incorporates H.264 hardware compression for recording program output to a hard drive connected to the laptop computer. Unfortunately, the compressed stream cannot be sent to a streaming server. The iTV-Studio includes an Internet broadcasting appliance for feeds to Livestream, Ustream, Twitch (now Amazon) or YouTube Live, so your show can be seen as it happens by as many viewers as you can attract.

The broadcasting appliance is a Teradek VidiU for a basic system built around ATEM Television Studio. For iTV-Studios built on Blackmagic Design's Production Studio 4K models, which do not record compressed video, we use either the Matrox Monarch HD (which records on SD cards and streams) or a combination of VidiU for streaming and BMD's Hyperdeck Shuttle, which can record on SSD drives in a number of formats (including uncompressed video and Apple ProRes 422).

To keep the basic iTV-Studio affordable, we equip it with three low-cost consumer camcorders. We find that they have excellent zoom lenses to cover large-venue events, as well as low-light capabilities that deliver good images in available light.

Every iTV-Studio is equipped with multiple SDI and HDMI outputs and inputs for

• six camcorders,
• or five camcorders and the laptop HDMI for a media server or for remote Skype input,
• or four camcorders plus two laptops.

In this last case, the optional second laptop supports a second switcher control panel - for an audio engineer, for example. It also provides a separate interface and hard drive for serving video files (reducing CPU cycles on the first laptop), or a home for our iTV-Rundown program scheduler with iTV-Prompter software. We equip the second laptop with another USB-powered 16" monitor