ISDA Student Employee Guide

The Story Studio is a streamlined video production studio and media editing suite located on the 2nd Floor of Roesch Library near the North Stairwell. It is designed to lower the barriers to producing high quality video by automating the setup of the camera, lights, microphone, and background.

The recording studio and editing stations can be reserved online at https://libcal.udayton.edu/reserve/storystudio. After submitting a reservation, the user receives an email confirmation instructing them to check in at the Hello Desk on the first floor. A member of the Hello Desk will escort the user to the Story Studio and swipe them into the room since the space requires card access.

The recording studio contains the following equipment:

• Video camera
• Playback monitor
• 75” touchscreen monitor running Windows 10
• Microphone
• Studio lights
• Creston touch panel

Instructions for using the recording studio are posted in the room opposite the podium and touch panel.

To get started, a user must have a USB flash drive formatted as FAT32. After inserting the flash drive into the Record slot on the podium, the lights, camera, microphone, and computer will turn on automatically. If a user does not have a flash drive or the one they have is not formatted as FAT32, they can purchase one in the vending machines on the first floor of Roesch Library.

The touch panel guides the user through the process of framing their shot, selecting content to display on the large monitor, and starting or stopping the recording.

When finished recording, the user should log out of the computer and then pull the USB drive from the Record slot. All equipment will turn off automatically, and the recording will be saved as a set of four files:

• thumbnails - a folder, typically empty, containing thumbnail images of the recording

• JSON file - a structured text file containing technical metadata about the recording

• M4A file - an audio-only version of the recording

• MP4 file - the full video recording. This is typically the recording the user will be editing

Troubleshooting Tip: If the user pulls their flash drive from the Record slot but has not progressed all the way through the touch panel’s interface and selected Finish Recording, the equipment will not turn off automatically. If this happens, just insert a drive back into the Record slot, and progress through the panel’s guided screens until you have reached the end. Then touch Finish Recording and pull the USB flash drive from the port.

The Media Editing stations include two Windows and one Mac computer located in a cluster outside the recording studio. These computers are equipped with the following software:

• Camtasia 2021
• Adobe Creative Suite (a software bundle including Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and many other creative Adobe applications)
• Audacity
• iMovie (Mac only)

Troubleshooting Tip: Due to Adobe Creative Suite being managed by other units elsewhere on campus, we are unable to fully integrate Adobe products with UD’s single sign-on system. When launching Adobe products on the Story Studio Media Editing stations, users should use the “Sign in with Google” option. If they are using their UD email address, this will direct them to the UD single sign-on process.