First year students: There are three supported computer labs that are available for all students at UCF to use – Computer Labs at UCF Technology Commons and Classroom Building I. They are equipped with Mac and PC workstations that have Adobe Creative Cloud, MS Office, and other useful software. They also provide collaboration spaces and printing services located at Technology Commons I, Technology Commons II, and Classroom Building I.

Second year students: The Media Lab in the Nicholson School of Communication and Media building, Room 161 – A computerized classroom and lab with iMac workstations to support a variety of media projects. They are equipped with iMac workstations that have Adobe Creative Cloud, MS Office, and other useful software. Available to Film, Journalism, and Radio-Television students skills, production, and studio courses.

Production Equipment – If you are enrolled in a course that has supported media assignments or sanctioned creative projects, the resources available to you will be communicated in those courses. Typically, production equipment and facility support begins with skills courses and increases as you advanced to production and/or studio courses. The Film and Mass Media Program does not lend production equipment out to student for personal projects that are not prompted by an instructor-of-record.

Students who are looking for equipment for personal projects or you have a media assignment for a course that does not have production equipment support, you can turn to this university resources that are made available to all students at UCF.

LibTech Desk at UCF Library – Provides free technology lending services to all students. This includes DSLR cameras, lenses, camcorders, microphones, laptops, iPads, and other miscellaneous A/V equipment. Located on the third floor of the John C. Hitt Library.

Student Support Desk – Located in both Technology Commons II and Classroom Building I, the Student Support Desk offers free technology checkout services. This includes Macbook Airs, Dell laptops, iPads, Microsoft Surfaces, GoPros, Centiq tablets, and adapters.

Knight’s Email and Office 365

This is a must have account for all students. The University of Central Florida has partnered with Microsoft to bring you the latest in communication and productivity applications. Knights E-Mail is powered by Microsoft Office 365 which is your online portal to create, store, and share documents. Students have free access to a full suite of web and desktop applications. All official university correspondence will only be sent to this e-mail account In order to comply with FERPA requirements. UCF faculty and staff are required to only conduct business with students using this official university email account.

• Create a Free Knights E-Mail Account
• MS Office 365 Online Portal
• How to Download MS Office Desktop Apps

Media Storage

Students are expected to have their own portable storage media to help them complete some of their assignments and creative projects. This need varies based on the prompts of individuals courses and faculty requires.  However, here are some recommended options:

USB Flash Drive – These are great for quick and reliable storage of all sorts of documents and data. We live in a digital age and these handy drives are a quick way to transport data to and fro. USB 2.0 flash drives are slow, but they are cheap enough to consider disposable. USB 3.0 flash drives are great for quickly moving files around, but cost a bit more. Choose which option best servers your needs.

Many professors collect media assignments by setting up a portable hard drive as a “dumping” station at the start of class. Students can also use their flash drives to easily playback high definition versions of their films for faculty and peer review. For everyday usage, we recommend anyone one of the Cruzer or the Ultra models from SanDisk. They are both cheap, durable and available in a wide range of capacities and colors to chosen from (key identifying features when everyone around has one too). For a high performance model, we recommend the SanDisk Extreme.

There are many USB flash drives just as good as the ones listed above, such as Kingston, PNY, or Verbatim.  USB flash drives can be purchased at the UCF Technology Product Center, online, or at a local neighborhood retailer.

External Drive – Each production student is expected to have an portable, external hard drive to store their media files. The UCF-NSCM Film and Mass Media Program provides many editorial workstations for students to use in both the lab and in stand-a-lone editing suites. Students should save all of their data onto their portable hard drives and not on to the internal disks of any of these workstations. This is done for several reasons:

1. Many students like to edit both in the lab and at home;
2. The security of your precious data is better in your hands than left on a high traffic workstation;
3. To prevent the over saturation of data on the hard drives of each workstation.
4. Creative projects are too large to store and backup on our Media Servers.

All editorial workstation comes equipped with at least a USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 interfaces to communicate with your hard drive. Many also have USB-C / Thunderbolt 3.

UCF-NSCM Film and Mass Media does not require a particular hard drive model or manufacturer but we do strongly recommend that students buy a hard drive that meets our minimum specifications to ensure that their purchase is able to at least support the editing of HD/2K video. If it is a mechanical hard drive disk (HDD), make sure it rotates at a minimum of 7,200 rpm; has at least a USB 3.0 interface; and has adequate reviews regarding cooling, bit rate, seek time, and overall durability. A drive with just a USB 2.0 interface can not properly support the playback and editing of most high definition and 2K video codecs. If it is a solid state drive (SSD), make sure it has at least a USB 3.0 interface.

You can purchase drives with a USB-C connecting interface if you’d like. Just be sure it comes with an adapter cable to interface with USB 3.0 computers.

Drive Recommendations -For a base level, high performance external hard drive designed for professional video editing we recommend the G-Drive ev RaW USB 3.0 HDD w/ Rugged Bumper from G-Technology. These 7,200rpm drives are a great value, have high performance, are extremely reliable, and work well when editing compressed HD, 2K, UHD, or 4K video. We recommend a 1TB – 4TB capacity, depending on your project’s needs. To protect against file corruption, theft, or fire (accidents); make sure you use a cheap secondary back up drive for storing your source materials. Use Dropbox to store regular backups of your NLE project files and XMLs.

It is strongly recommend that you keep and maintain a full backup of your data on a completely separate external hard drive, even if you are using a RAID array for protection against sudden mechanical drive failure. This inexpensive back up should be stored in a different location than your primary editing drive. This is the only way to protect your data from theft, accident (i.e., fire or impact damage from dropping), or a dreaded file system corruption. This drive does not have to be a high performance 7,200 rpm drive, as you will not be editing video directing from it. Get something cheap. We recommend the My Passport Ultra 5,400 rpm drives from Western Digital to fill this role. Load them up with your original footage, toss ’em in the closet and forget about them until you need to recover.

There are many external hard drive manufactures that are just as capable as the ones listed above, such as LaCie, Buffalo, Promise, and Seagate. Check out the UCF Technology Product Center, online, or a local neighborhood retailer for hard drive models that are suited for professional video editing.