TriCaster™ has already received industry raves, and no less than a dozen awards from key industry outlets. Part of that is due to the ease with which TriCaster can insert (or ‘roll in’) video clips at specific moments from its integrated VCR. This tutorial adds a nice twist: the ability to play back slow motion, or slo-mo clips on demand, linked to TriCaster cue.

TriCaster has already proven itself as an industry favorite for live presentation, given its flexibility in mixing cameras, clips, titles and then sending it simultaneously to video out, projector and live Internet stream. Here’s a power-tip for your next TriCaster event: adding slo-mo to VCR playback!

NewTek has endeavored to include as many keyboard shortcuts into the interface as possible, such as the standard windows keys for copy, cut and paste (ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-x, respectively) and what are known as the ‘JKL keys’. JKL keys are industry standard keystrokes to manipulate playback of selected devices. The ‘k’ key toggles stop/play, and the keys on either side will affect that device’s play speed. The ‘j’ key will progressively slow down playback, and (as you might have already guessed) the ‘l’ key speeds up playback. The problem with changing speeds on-air is that each different speed causes a minor pause in playback, as the new speed is set, but there’s a way around that, by setting the target speed first.

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Load several clips in TriCaster VCR, and with the VCR in preview mode, tap k so the VCR is playing your clip at normal speed. With a clip that has some fairly constant motion (such as the AmericanFlag.avi loaded on NTSC TriCasters), tap the ‘j’ key, and it will toggle to 75% playback speed. Tap it once again, and your clip is now playing back at half speed.

With the clip now playing back at half speed, click on the VCR pause button, and then activate the Cue function. Now, when you perform a Take or Auto to roll in your clip, it will play back at this slower speed.