How Mavis Studio Is Expanding Live Production Teaching at Sussex
Hero image displays a student about to mix between cameras using Mavis Studio
At the University of Sussex, live production is not taught as theory. It is taught under pressure, in real time, with students taking on the roles, responsibilities and deadlines of a working broadcast team.
For Professor Paul Newbury, convenor for the Digital Media and Games degree and Jacob Sharpe, Studio Manager that practical experience is essential. With over 30 years of experience between them, Paul and Jacob oversee the Live Video Production module, where second-year students produce and transmit a live TV programme as part of their assessment.
The module is designed to move students beyond individual camera, sound and lighting skills and into the time-sensitive environment of a live broadcast. They must understand production roles, work as a team, manage technical infrastructure and deliver a programme that goes out live online at a scheduled time. In other words, the assessment behaves like a real broadcast: when the clock starts, the show starts.
“Live production is a brilliant teaching environment because it makes everything matter,” says Jacob. “Students very quickly understand that planning, communication and technical reliability are not separate things. They all come together the moment you go live.”
The challenge is that live production has traditionally depended on access to specialist spaces. At Sussex, the department has long operated two broadcast studios. Studio 1 is the main facility, built around a combination of SDI and IP video. Studio 2 has been the smaller teaching studio, also used by university societies. But as student demand grows, physical studio time can become a bottleneck.
That is where Mavis Studio has changed the model.
The University has completely overhauled Studio 2 around a flexible NDI workflow powered by Mavis Studio. Sony cameras connect to Atomos Shogun monitor-recorders, converting SDI signals into NDI and placing them on the local network. Alongside the cameras, students use iPhones running the Mavis Camera app, connected through a dedicated Wi-Fi 6 access point. This gives roaming operators a clean, reliable wireless signal for dynamic handheld and gimbal shots.
Everything runs using NDI HX3, giving the department high-quality video across standard network and Wi-Fi infrastructure. Mavis Studio itself runs on a dedicated iPad in the studio gallery, connected by Ethernet. Audio is kept simple too, with portable radio mic receivers connected directly to the cameras.
For students, the impact is significant. Each group creates its own live TV show, developing all the visual identity, graphics, animated sequences and wipes that support the production. One group produces while another crews, meaning every student experiences both sides of the live workflow. As part of their preparation, students create professional-looking broadcast assets, including logos, colour palettes, fonts, animated logo sequences and transition wipes. These are then loaded into Mavis Studio and used as part of the final production.
By the final week, each group has to bring all of that work together. Their show is scheduled, streamed live on the internet, and assessed as it happens. The on-air and off-air times do not move. If something goes wrong, students have to adapt. If someone misses a cue, the production continues. That makes the reliability and simplicity of the technology critical.
“What we really love about the setup,” says Paul, “is that students get the same type of features we use in our traditional gallery, but it is all running on an iPad.”
That portability changes how students learn. They are no longer limited to scheduled studio access. The department can issue iPads to students, or students can install the software on their own devices. They can prepare assets in computer labs, practise workflows at home, and arrive in the studio with a much stronger understanding of the production environment.
It also changes what the department can offer. Previously, the module was realistically limited to around 40 students per term because of studio capacity. With Mavis Studio and NDI, the system is scalable. New rigs can be created in general teaching spaces, expanding access without needing to build another traditional gallery.
This is where the educational value of the system becomes clear. Mavis Studio does not remove the discipline of live production; it makes it more accessible. Students still have to plan, rehearse, operate cameras, manage audio, prepare graphics, direct, vision mix and deliver under pressure. But the tools are no longer locked behind one room, one gallery or one fixed timetable.
For media departments and production educators, that opens up new possibilities. A live production workflow can be built around devices students already understand, connected through standard IP infrastructure, and scaled across teaching spaces as required. NDI becomes the bridge between professional broadcast thinking and the flexible environments where students now learn.
For Sussex, Mavis Studio is more than a compact production system. It is a way of giving more students access to the future of broadcast: network-based, flexible, scalable and collaborative.
By combining Mavis Studio with NDI, the University of Sussex has created a teaching workflow that democratises live production, giving educators a professional, robust system and giving students the freedom to learn wherever production happens.
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