Case Studies

Matrox VS4Recorder Pro Multi-Camera Recording App Helps BritishEnglish.TV Teach English

BritishEnglish.TV producers see all camera inputs using Matrox VS4Recorder Pro as a multiviewer.
Learning a new language can be daunting, but with the business world becoming increasingly globalized, proficiency in English is fast becoming a requirement. Enter BritishEnglish.TV, a new production facility located in the centre of Madrid. It provides turnkey E-learning solutions and professional multicam studio services to educational institutions and companies to teach English in an engaging way with customized videos.
 
Two studios at BritishEnglish.TV are designed to capture high quality HD video and audio, which help students learn proper pronunciation. Since they started using the Matrox VS4Recorder Pro multi-camera recording app, the process from multicam capture to editing in Adobe Premiere Pro CC has been simplified, allowing BritishEnglish.TV to quickly and efficiently provide content to users.
BritishEnglish.TV studios integrated multi-camera capture and multiviewer capabilities enabled by Matrox VS4Recorder Pro along with an auto-calibrating light system, green screen, editing bays, and sophisticated audio mixers.

Recording Process

BritishEnglish.TV uses up to eight cameras simultaneously and records synchronized, frame-accurate HD video and 16 channels of 24-bit audio directly to network-attached storage (NAS). "Increasing the number of channels from four to eight was straightforward with the VS4Recorder Pro software," says Jazz Loyal, CTO and Business English Teacher at BritishEnglish.TV. "We simply added a second VS4-based system to our network in a master-slave configuration using the VS4Control feature."
 
During the recording process, the system operator marks important moments using the VS4Recorder Pro event markers feature, which "makes it easy to identify the key points in Adobe Premiere Pro CC," explains Loyal. Additional metadata stored by VS4Recorder Pro makes it easy to search for specific information such as timecode, date and time created, creator, label, nickname, tape name and source.
Matrox VS4Recorder Pro frame accurately captures multiple channels of HD video and audio in perfect sync, simplifying multi-camera editing with Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

Multiviewer

The VS4Recorder Pro system can also be used as a multiviewer, which eliminated the need for BritishEnglish.TV to purchase extra screens and splitters. "The multiviewer features have proven to be quite helpful," says Loyal. "We use the file and label overlays to direct the camera operators during a shoot. This information is stored as metadata and during the editing process lets us easily identify the various angles and who shot them. The disk space indicator specifies how much recording time is remaining, which gives the operator ample time to adjust if we're running low on storage space on the NAS."
BritishEnglish.TV studios use Matrox VS4Recorder Pro to capture high quality HD video and audio, which help students learn proper pronunciation.

Post-Production

Matrox VS4Recorder Pro also eases the editing process. The video files stored on NAS are easily accessible and the file synchronization means editing in Adobe Premiere Pro CC can be done much more quickly than before. "This really helps us to have a quick turn-around of our lessons from editing to final deliveries to our clients," Loyal comments. Once finalized, the videos are uploaded to the client's platform or provided for download via a private server.
 
BritishEnglish.TV is a resource for individuals, groups and organizations that are interested in learning English and Loyal is confident that freely available videos will aid and engage language students.
"Building the BritishEnglish.TV studios was a great technological challenge" says Loyal. "With support from Cris Pedraza and Kall Morar, we integrated not only the multi-camera capture and multiviewer capabilities enabled by Matrox VS4Recorder Pro but also an auto-calibrating light system, green screen, editing bays, and sophisticated audio mixers. Matrox saved us many hours by putting so many products into one package. VS4Recorder Pro is definitely one of the right tools to help us achieve our goals."