A Cautionary Tale for TriCaster Users

[jcupp]

Well, I just did a live switch of an All Hands Meeting at the local Navy base to their on-base cable system. It was a two camera shoot, pretty simple and the TriCaster worked great as usual. I recorded the thing to the hard drive so that I could make a tape that would replay later on cable. My big mistake was apparently not hitting the Stop Recording button before shutting the software down. It never saved the file, never warned me about the stupid move I was about to make, didn't even leave a temp file behind for radical avi header surgery.

I did run a tape in the main camera so I'm not completely screwed, I'm missing my cut away shots and the powerpoint slides. But I'm pretty disappointed that the easy-to-use interface didn't prevent my blunder. Sigh, from now on I'm dragging a VHS deckalong as a backup backup.

I will be sending an official feature request in ASAP. Three other things I'd like to see are a counter for the recording, some way to see the amount of free space on a drive without going to the Capture Media panel (and thereby disrupting the output) and an "Are You Sure" requester when you try to delete something from the overlay. In the heat of running two cameras and switching I pressed the delete key and nuked one of my lower thirds.

[tiff1967]

We had the same thing happen while we were working on our tricaster and lost power. No file was saved.

Another future idea. A pause button on the record feature.

Bob

[lancelewis]

If we are starting a wish list, then I would like to add:

1) The ability to change the labels for each input source. Instead of camera 1, I would like to be able to write in the name of the person on that camera....that fits the way we do things a bit better.

2) having the option to make parts of our interface larger...so if I am only using 3 cams and no other sources, I would like to be able to see those three cams in a larger space.