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Geoff (left) and Clayton (right)
Geoff (left) and John (right)
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Boasting 1 million visitors per year, Mystic Aquarium & Institute of Exploration is one of the largest aquariums in the US. Each year the aquarium creates a variety of multimedia exhibits for the public. At one time the aquarium out-sourced its multimedia work to post-production houses. However, due to expense and limited creative control, the aquarium's technology department brought multimedia production in house three years ago.
Mystic Aquarium's challenge was to find an easy-to-use, yet feature rich software that the aquarium's AV technician could successfully use to create polished productions. Though the aquarium's two AV technicians, Geoff Nosal and Clayton Nagy, came from a video editing background, they wanted video editing and DVD authoring software that they could install and begin using immediately without a high learning curve.
No stranger to Ulead, Mystic Aquarium's Technology Director, John Corallo, knew that Ulead's multimedia creation software products were both simple to learn yet offered sophisticated features that a user could explore as their skills improved. Mystic Aquarium now uses MediaStudio Pro for video editing, DVD Workshop for DVD authoring, COOL 3D for creating 3D titles, and COOL 360 for Web creation and design.The Mystic Aquarium staff use MediaStudio Pro and DVD Workshop to create and author videos for the aquarium's Challenge of the Deep exhibit, a famous multimedia exhibit on deep sea archeology. The exhibit consists of a variety of looping videos that cover the work of explorer Dr. Robert Ballard, who is considered the foremost expert on deep-sea archeology and famous for finding the Titanic and most recently the PT-109.
"We decided to switch to DVD Workshop from a competing product because we wanted something that was easier to use and had better performance," says Corallo, who began video editing three years ago with MediaStudio Pro.
Visitors start the exhibit by walking onto what looks like the stern of a ship. On the stern, they enter the exhibit through a simulated control van. From there they go into the main exhibit area which contains two theatres, one showing videos of Dr. Ballard's mission, and the other, an interactive Immersion Theater, exploring the National Marine Sanctuaries with live underwater cameras. Within the aquarium itself, there are numerous video screens with looping videos created with MediaStudio Pro and DVD Workshop. |
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Corallo and his team typically shoot footage on mini DV which they bring into MediaStudio Pro for editing. They then export the footage to DVD using DVD Workshop for playback on their 40 standard DVD players or they create DVD quality mpegs using MediaStudio Pro for playback on their six video servers. The videos are programmed to loop in certain areas of the aquarium, while interactive in others.
John plans to continue using Ulead products to create Mystic Aquarium's innovative multimedia exhibits. Future plans include using MediaStudio Pro and DVD Workshop to create a Mystic Aquarium souvenir DVDs that visitors can buy at the aquarium gift shop.
For more information on the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration visit www.mysticaquarium.org. |
