Since its foundation in 2004, Microsoft’s Channel 9 has produced thousands of videos aimed at empowering the community of Microsoft customers and developers.
In the beginning, Channel 9’s content served as an affordable alternative to Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference, which was the main platform for customers and developers to connect with Microsoft employees in a meaningful way. Today, it’s grown into a full-blown production studio with over 3 million unique viewers every month. With a visit to their website, you’ll uncover over 2,500 pages of video content like talk shows, instructional videos, keynotes, and coverage of Microsoft’s most prominent developer events.
The team at Channel 9 is lead by Golnaz Alibeigi, Studio Manager and ringleader of creative operations. In any given week, Golnaz and her team produce at least ten different shows about a plethora of topics that range from cloud computing to machine learning, game development, and AI.
The New and Improved Channel 9 Studio
Naturally, the team at Channel 9 knows a thing or two about technology. So as they started outgrowing their first studio, they quickly launched into building a brand new facility, decked out with some of the best equipment on the market. You can check out it out for yourself in this short tour video:
Behind the Workflow
All of the Channel 9 shows come to life with the help of a NewTek Tricaster 8000, which enables the team to produce high-quality multi-cam productions from three different on-site studio rooms. The largest of the three studios houses two sets, a green screen, a studio camera, and several Panasonic AW-HE130 robotic PTZ cameras that all record to ProRes 444 using Atomos Shogun Studios.
The cameras are routed directly into the TriCaster, which helps Golnaz spice up the shows by enabling a single producer to control cameras, add graphics, and stream their shows live to a worldwide audience. TriCaster is the heart of Channel 9’s productions, and EVO is the brain that enables the post-production team to share, edit, and manage the media recorded during production.
“We’re sometimes delivering over 100 videos a week, so having EVO has been absolutely essential.”
The team relies heavily on their EVO system to store, manage, and share the vast amounts of media they’re creating. For Golnaz and her team, having the ability to quickly find media and share projects from any of their three edit stations running a mix of Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve has increased productivity drastically.
Before EVO, completing a project without shared storage was like working with their hands tied behind their backs. Media and project files were always stranded on someone’s workstation, making it frustrating to share media and making collaboration impossible. “Before EVO, we constantly had issues with sharing our files,” Golnaz said. “Now, EVO houses all of our data. All of our raw footage, Premiere projects, graphics, and finished shows are safe and available from any machine. We’re sometimes delivering over 100 videos a week, so having EVO has been absolutely essential to our workflow,” she continued.
An IP-Ready Foundation
The TriCaster and EVO combination is a perfect solution for live production teams who need a streamlined workflow. EVO allows teams to record camera ISOs and playback clips from DDR simultaneously. And, as an NDI source and destination, EVO also allows operators to send and receive files over IP, giving Channel 9 a future-proof infrastructure that will enable them to implement NDI in the future.
With the help of SNS and NewTek, Microsoft’s brand new Channel 9 studio is perfectly equipped to create high-quality, engaging content.
Are you looking for shared storage to complete your in-house content studio? Or just looking to improve your post workflow? Schedule a product demo to learn how we can help!