JazzAid Live at the Banyan Bowl, a jazz festival that the South of Florida has been celebrating for the past eleven years, was in serious danger due to the Covid-19 restrictions.

“I can’t describe the panic, the disappointment, the disillusionment, the sheer terror of living through a pandemic,” said Alana Perez, Director of Pinecrest Gardens, the botanical park that contains Miami’s famed Banyan Bowl.

But Daniel Sell; video producer, director and musician had the solution. And he had chosen NewTek in order to implement that. The key has been the NewTek TriCaster® and NDI®.

The NewTek TriCaster puts an entire suite of media production capabilities at a creator’s fingertips. The TriCaster Mini – which Sell initially used in his production – is also easy to transport wherever needed and powerful enough to handle even complex productions.

Meanwhile, NDI is a software standard developed by NewTek that enables video-compatible products to communicate, deliver, and receive high-definition video and audio over standard IP networks in a high-quality manner suitable for switching in a live production environment.

This combination, with the addition of PTZ cameras from Midtown Video in rental just in exchange for sponsorship, allowed Sell to save that festival. The result, according to the venue, has been impressive.

“I started the series using a TriCaster Mini with HDMI inputs, so I only had four hardwired inputs. The four manned cameras are all SDI, but I needed more”, Sell said. “So when I wanted to add some PTZ point-of-view cameras, those had to be incorporated into the TriCaster through NDI. When I look at all the things that are being done as livestream events in the era of COVID, the large-scale productions that are the most polished are all being done with NDI and TriCasters, they’re using different cameras and different streaming devices and software, but the guts of those systems all seem to be the same. They’re all built around NDI and TriCasters”.