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Bits
& Bytes
Digital
Students
The
Ringling School of Art and Design Upgrades
from Analog to Digital
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The internationally
renowned Ringling School of Art and Design
recently updated its video production facility
from an analog Sony Betacam SP® system
to a Digital Betacam system, and its adoption
of digital tools has taken its students
to the technological forefront of their
respective fields.
The upgrade in
hardware reflects the shift to digital processing
in the film, video and animation industries.
Ringling wanted its equipment to reflect
standard practices in the industry and to
better enable its students to learn, create
and compete with their peers, says Dr. Mahmoud
Pegah, director of institutional technology,
Ringling School of Art and Design, Sarasota,
FL.
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Jim McCampbell, the head of Ringling’s
computer animation department, offers
another reason for the Digital Betacam
upgrade: quality. “Our students submit
their work to many film festivals
and competitions,” says McCampbell.
“The analog system was susceptible
to generational loss, especially when
students were creating, for instance,
five-story-high images.”
In order to provide the best entries
in the international competitions,
Ringling needed digital equipment.
With it, students can perform nonlinear
editing, which not only offers repetitive
editing without quality loss, but
also spatial flexibility.
The Digital Betacam system works
smoothly
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Computer Animation
student David Linsey inspects Ringling's
new Digital Betacam system. |
with Ringling’s analog equipment,
says McCampbell, which the facility uses to
access their analog archives. Like McCampbell,
Pegah is pleased with the new Digital Betacam
equipment: “It’s a robust system.”
Moreover, the
students are easily adapting to their new
digital tools. “Because of its accessibility,
students don’t have to spend their time
learning how to use the system,” says Pegah.
“They can use that time to concentrate on
their projects.”
The Digital Betacam
system is also scalable, which is important
as Ringling plans to hook its production
facility into its campus network in the
future, says Pegah.
The $200,000 integration
project was installed by Sony’s Systems
Integration Company. They did “a wonderful
job,” says Pegah. “They were true professionals,
from the engineers that came and listened
to what we had envisioned to the people
who did the wiring. We get many visitors
here and often, after showing them our students’
work, I’ll show them the wiring. By itself,
it’s a piece of art.”
Ringling is so
pleased with the results of the Digital
Betacam system that it intends to use Sony
DTF® storage equipment for another project
it has in the works: a larger-scale version
of what the animation department has now,
intended for campus-wide use.
“We’re thankful
for Sony’s participation,” says McCampbell.
“The program has had a lot of success. Just
this year a student won the Student Academy
Award for animation, and half of the student
works shown in this year’s Siggraph Electronic
& Animation Theaters were from Ringling.
Sony’s products make it possible for the
world to see these art works in the same
way the artists did as they were creating
them.” —Marieke Cassia Gartner
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