Bournemouth University’s renowned Media School has become the first campus-based Sony HD facility in the UK, equipped with equipment for HD video production and a managed post production environment. The new studio will be fully operational for the start of the new academic year and follows a multi-million-pound refurbishment of the University’s Media School, writes Adrian Pennington.
Sony’s bespoke design features media management device HDXchange, a number of HDC-1500 portable cameras with advanced HD Digital Signal Processing and a range of flat-panel LMD video monitors.
“This is a major investment for Bournemouth University and underscores our commitment to ensuring that students work with the very latest industry-standard equipment,” said Stephen Jukes, Dean of the Media School.
“Sony has a strong track record of delivering innovative and tailored production systems for the professional broadcast industry and we feel they are the ideal partner to build an HD studio so that our graduates can hit the ground running when they start their working career.”
The facility upgrade is intended to offer students practical experience of video production including content-management, reviewing and previewing footage, or editing video. The HDXchange, for example, will enable students to produce content more quickly and easily than ever before for a wide range of playout platforms — from conventional broadcast to mobile devices.
At the heart of HDXchange is a high-performance server optimised to support several students accessing HD content simultaneously. This server allows multiple students to browse, search, edit and manage content that’s stored natively in the same MPEG Long GOP HD file format.
The Media School at Bournemouth University is the largest centre of professional higher education for the media industries in the UK. It is the UK’s only Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (as designated by the Higher Education Funding Council for England) and an accredited Skillset Screen Academy.
