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| More equipment might result in need for special technical support |
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| Features |
| Written by Anna Ceachirova and Boyan Simeonov |
| Sunday, 11 October 2009 20:07 |
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Two years ago the Journalism and Mass Communication (JMC) department presented the administration with a list of top gear the department needs in terms of new equipment. This year, the department is getting a second portion of new purchases, namely still cameras, which will arrive in the Spring. However, right now the main concern of the department seems to be not the acquisition of new equipment but its maintenance. The total sum negotiated for new equipment in the department two years ago was $150,000. Since the total is too big to be granted in one go, the university spread it out in portions. "We asked them to pick top priorities each year," Dean of Faculty Steven Sullivan said. "Last year it was TV equipment; this year it is going to be still cameras; next year there will be more purchases." Journalism professor Phelps Hawkins was in charge of the video cameras purchase last year because of his 40 years of experience in the field of television. Hawkins said that there are already some problems with maintaining, using, and repairing some of the TV equipment. "No responsible institution is going to maintain sophisticated electronic equipment of any kind without having a trained technical person to oversee, maintain, prepare, and make recommendations," Hawkins said. For the moment, all the JMC equipment is kept in the Office of Communication and Computing (OCC) in the Main Building. Hawkins said that he does not blame the OCC since he believes maintaining such specialized equipment is not in their expertise. "Their expertise is computers and not television." The solution he proposed is finding a technical manager to be in charge of the equipment. "I don't think my colleagues are not skillful enough to handle the equipment according to the available manuals and documentation [of the equipment]," Lachezar Filtchev, OCC director, said. He added OCC staff members participate in professional development trainings, provided for by the university. "Improving qualification is very important for every OCC staff member." In the beginning of September there was an incident during a TV reporting class when three of the five capturing cameras did not work. The problem was solved by OCC repairing one of them and buying two new ones. "I think what we need to figure out as a department is a plan for how we can get to the point when we actually have some maintenance here," Department Chair Sandra Earley said. She added that the problem with fixing equipment if it goes out of order is that the process could take 10 days to two weeks sometimes. "The teaching cameras can't be out of service that long." "It is ridiculous for us to have thousands of dollars of editing software and thousands of dollars editing equipment with nobody knowing how this software works," Hawkins said. "We are treating the symptoms; we are not addressing the disease." Filtchev said the OCC is doing everything possible to handle the available equipment well. "As an unobtrusive people we don't want to give now long list of examples," he added. "Lots of clever things and innovations were done by OCC to improve the quality of classroom instruction." "I hope the JMC department invests more in non-TV related equipment," junior Raman Faminou said. He is taking Introduction to TV reporting this semester. "For example, the software that we have got now is fairly good, but it can be better." |
Comments
On the other points, Adobre Premiere is fine. We can have Final Cut but it will cost us tons - Macs are not cheap (thought they are better).
OCC can't maintain a proper internet network, let alone cameras! The manual don't guiede you how to repair cameras, for god's sake!
Turns out price-wise Final Cut is better than Premiere: Final Cut Studio, which includes the video editor, audio editor, motion graphics composer, dvd authoring, etc., costs k, whereas Adobe Premiere CS4 (the video editor itself) costs 0. I can't argue about features, though, as I don't know jack about video editing.
IMHO, the price of macs isn't the obstacle to getting one (or three) for the university. I've spoken with members of the COS faculty re. getting a mac, as several COS students are interested (hint: iphone programming) and we could share with our JMC fellows. My suspicions are that the OCC refuses to put anything on the network that isn't Windows XP, because they are not trained to apply Active Directory Group Policies on anything else, even though Apple licensed the specification from Microsoft so it's all sunshine and babies in terms of compatibility. Sadly, my own dark thoughts were confirmed.
In conclusion, it's not the price that's stopping us from getting a mac, it's the fact that we have an IT department that's forced to manage lightbulbs.