Teresis Teams with Rapidtext to Bring Hollywood Transcription Services to Marshall, Mo.; Training Center Opens to Prepare Workers in the New Technology.

MARSHALL, Mo. -- Teresis, the Los Angeles-based provider of digital workflow solutions for television, and Rapidtext, a national transcription services company, have combined to bring a piece of Hollywood to Marshall, Mo. This rural community 60 miles east of Kansas City will make use of its newly acquired high-speed Internet connections to bring work back from off shore resources to the Midwest. Using technology developed by Teresis, local workers will provide transcription services for Hollywood-based reality TV series.

Rapidtext will initially subcontract with 20 to 40 transcribers in Marshall who will download television "dailies" onto their home computers. "Dailies" are the unedited raw videos shot on location for reality-type programs. The transcribers will view the dailies with Teresis Transcription Client and dictate word-for-word transcripts from the video. The transcripts are then sent back to the show electronically and uploaded into the Teresis Production Portal where producers and editors use the transcripts to access the dailies and assemble important story points into a paper cut which is then routed to an editor to assemble the final cut of the program.

Keri DeWitt, CEO of Teresis and a native of Marshall, designed the process for converting television dailies from videotape into digital files that can be simultaneously loaded into editing systems and sent over the Internet to transcribers. The Teresis/Rapidtext service dramatically improves production efficiency for unscripted (reality) television programs and brings significant savings to the shows throughout the postproduction phase.

The opportunity to bring jobs back to Marshall had special significance for DeWitt. "Marshall has been hit hard in the last 15 years," said DeWitt. "There aren't many options available other than minimum wage work for many of the women there. We need to think creatively on how we can bring offshore business back to the U.S."

DeWitt contacted Roy Hunter, Executive Director of Marshall-Saline Development Corporation. Hunter championed the idea as an opportunity to bring jobs virtually into the community. Hunter, with the assistance of the Missouri Valley Community Action Agency and other local supporters, created the Central Missouri Technology and Skills Training Center in Marshall to train local workers in the new technology. The Center will hold its grand opening on June 24th with an open house and ribbon cutting ceremony.