February 17, 2009, And How It Affects You.

I have a feeling, a strong feeling, that February 17, 2009 (or perhaps the 18th; it's unclear which midnight it will be) will be a day for the history books. That day marks the completion of the FCC's much-heralded DTV Transition.

At the stroke of midnight local time either at the end or the beginning of February 17, all of the analog TV transmitters will be shutting down for good, with the exception of a very small number of low-power and translator stations. At that same time, the Digital TV stations (that everybody on TV is pushing you to watch) will change their channel allocations. And at that time, any currently operating radio transmitter in the 692-806 MHz band (channels 51 and up) will be required to go off the air for good.

This means interesting things for the consumer market. I think, much as the idiots in Washington try, the Average American Television Viewer is unaware of that cutoff date. The average college student, for example, with the 13-inch TV in the dorm room. If you have an analog TV set, unless you have one of those fancy DTV Converter Boxes, you will no longer be able to watch anything over the air. If you're on cable TV systems, you're probably okay for now. You will also need a better antenna: you will need a much higher gain UHF TV antenna, especially if you live in the fringe areas. The guys in Greenville with their gain antennas at 50 feet beaming Dallas will need a much higher gain antenna, possibly higher up. The average metro-area viewer might get by okay with an existing antenna, except the guys in the northern part of the DFW metroplex. That is interesting thing number one.

Interesting thing number two was announced in an FCC Notice Of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) a couple of weeks ago. In an unexpected move, they proposed to (and therefore will) ban all existing radio transmitters above channel 51. Now, you think, this isn't a big deal; the TV stations are moving anyway. But this is where wireless microphones and in-ear monitors operate. For ages the high-end systems operated above channel 51 (in the "700 Meg Band") because there were more wide open spaces there, fewer TV station to interfere. While we were expecting to have to deal with more interference come February 17, we weren't expected to be forced to go off the air there. So we must relocate our affected wireless microphones somewhere else, which means we must replace them with others that operate somewhere else (the tuned circuits in them can't be pulled that far). Interesting thing number two.

Interesting thing number three: we don't know where we'll have to move them to, or if we'll have to move others as well. See, the only authorized users of wireless microphone systems in this country are broadcast licensees; wireless mics are licensed and intended originally as short-range reporter-in-the-field systems, not church or theatre or band systems. We've been operating them, and the FCC's been well aware of it, for over 20 years. But there's also a related petition before the FCC to create a new wireless microphone radio service and authorize us to operate somewhere; but "somewhere" has yet to be defined. The petition suggests the UHF TV band on a secondary non-interference basis and 2.0 gigs on a primary basis. Depending on how the FCC decides to rule, we will have to do one of three things:
- move our 700-meg links down below 700, but continue using the others (this is simplest)
- transition away from UHF TV band for 2.0 gigs or somewhere else (replace every wireless set)
- cease operating altogether (disastrous)

Like I said, the NPRM is only two weeks old, and they have a one- or two-month comment window. After that, they will issue a Report And Order (R&O) detailing what we will have to do by February 17. The R&O I'm expecting to come out around Christmas.

I think we (this is the general American "we") will be experiencing fallout from February 17 for a while. Next April will prove very interesting, and not in a good way. UHF digital TV signals, you see, don't fade or ghost or go snowy (this part they tell you); but the part they don't tell you is that at the signal level where an analog signal would start fading, the digital is unrecoverable; it goes blue or stops entirely. It takes more signal strength for the digital signal (actually, signal-to-noise ratio) to be recovered; so when storm season rolls around next time, and you're watching David Finfrock on the TV to tell you which way the tornado's going to hit your house from; and a tree branch spins your antenna the wrong way, or the transmitter site loses a tower (or the PA, having to run on their exciter only), or there's a lot of rain and ghosting (and recall that those aren't uncommon scenarios here in severe weather), you're going to be caught by surprise when the TV goes blue. And there's no analog fallover, no backup, since it'll have been since February that the analogs are off the air permanently and, in fact, illegal to turn back on.

Interesting thing number four: on Monday, a region of North Carolina has voluntarily agreed to shut off their analogs early and switch to digital-only. Note that sometime between tomorrow and Sunday there's scheduled to be a hurricane there. This will be interesting in multiple ways. Will they reschedule the shutoff date for the hurricane? (this would be an admission that they don't think it will work well enough) If they do shut off at noon Eastern time Monday, how will the digital-only handle the severe weather? What will the consumer response be to the shutoff? I believe the smart thing for them to do is to reschedule for later, but if they do that, they'll be admitting to the world that they think that digital-only isn't good for public safety. If they keep on, will the digitals be knocked off too? (it's pretty well acknowledged that these new digital transmitters are far far far less reliable than the 50-year-old analog transmitters that have been running continuously for 50 years)

All this, and more, will be very very interesting to keep track of in the coming weeks and months.


sk

12:17 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

How To Build A Video Ministry In Six Months.

... or rather, one way to do it.

So let's say you're a tech guy for a church, and you decide (or the church decide) you want to begin a video ministry. Let's say you want to start planning it now and have it going by Easter. You're a smallish church, not one of the fhuge Megachurches with infinite budgets. You want to be able to do a handful of moderately basic things: record the church services to computer, make DVDs, put the video on the internet, feed ancillary areas of the church building, and at times even put cameras on the projection screens.

Here is one method:

This is a perfect time in the history of television to pick up some good used analog TV cameras, They're coming out of the studios and trucks now in anticipation of February 17 and the DTV Transition. There is really no demand for them either, since all the normal prospective buyers (their competitors) are also dumping their analog gear. You can probably find a pretty good analog camera chain for about $2K, sometimes less. Similarly, the rest of the analog production chain suffers the same fate, and you can pick up that stuff for cheap too. The exact equipment that was doing news and football 20 years ago, even 15 years ago, even 10 years ago .. some even 5 years ago. It's not bad stuff, it's just analog, and at midnight February 17 all the analog transmitters are going off the air for good. Not that the stations can't handle analog material, but their money is going into the digital and HD gear, which require replacement of every piece of video equipment from camera head to transmitter.

So for the same amount of money you'd sink into a consumer or prosumer DV/"HDV" camcorder setup with low-end equipment, you can put together a system that would have been in an analog truck or studio not long ago and is much better where it counts.

In the end, to do isolated "broadcast" and projection feeds you will need two production switchers. You can start with one initially, since it's not until six months down the road you want to do broadcast. The Grass Valley 100N is a very suitable switcher for either application, as are others like it. The 100N regularly goes for $1.5K or less on Ebay. You want to find one that's not a Super Tech Special, one in moderately decent shape. You will also want to find somebody who can work on and maintain this stuff, because it does take some special care and feeding. By comparison, the cheapest prosumer or presentation switcher that's remotely close in quality and features to the 100 is Edirol's V-8, a new product, for $2K, and while it can be a great problem-solver, it's going to be frustrating, especially for anyone from TV-land to operate (it has a stupid layout, in particular).

Another thing you will have to get is a bank of frame synchronizers for your consumer inputs like the computer and the DVD player. Professional video, unlike consumer, works when all of the video signals are aligned in time and color phase. Professional gear like camera base stations have an input for a reference signal, which they generate their output in time with; consumer gear does not, so the frame sync takes in unreferenced video and delays it until it is in time with a reference. You will need one frame sync for each consumer input you will have.

Professional switchers have an output called "black burst" which can be used as a reference signal for this timing. With only one switcher, as you will have at first, you can use Switcher Black as the timing reference, though when you link up two switchers later you'll want to get an independent reference generator called an NTSC Generator.

To feed black burst into the timing inputs (labeled "Genlock" or "Reference Video") of your frame syncs and base stations and such, you will want a distribution amplifier (DA). The DA is the cleanest way of feeding a single signal (like BB) multiple places. Eventually you'll want a handful of DAs, so a DA tray is handy; these have often something like eight DA cards each distributing one input to six outputs. Grass Valley 8500-series trays are common and good.

So you have switcher, DA tray, and a few frame syncs, and you're keeping an eye open for a good deal on a camera package. Your first step will be to install those basic elements to begin to build the infrastructure of your video systems. To plug the things together you will need cables. RG-59 coax with BNC connectors is pretty standard for that, and you can often find old lots of it coming out of, again, old studios and trucks. It's also not hard to build yourself: get a spool of cable, some crimp connectors, a crimping tool, and you're set after a few practice rounds.

You will need at least one video monitor, if not two. 9-inch to 14-inch studio monitors are good for this, and triple 5" monitors are a fair space compromise too. You will eventually want more, but you really need at least one to start with.

You will also want to make a home for all of this stuff. You'll want to put the machinery in a room that's acoustically isolated from the sanctuary, so the fan noise is isolated and so you have enough room to put the stuff. You will want at least one tall equipment rack in this room. You may choose to place the control point in this room (an office adjoining the sanctuary, perhaps, or an old isolated sound booth), or the controls may be in the sanctuary.

In step one, you take switcher black into a DA to feed the GL inputs of the frame syncs. You take switcher program into a DA to feed your projectors and, if you have more than one monitor, your program monitor. You take switcher preview and feed another monitor. You feed computers and DVD players and such into the frame syncs. You time everything out (an afternoon project) and it's ready to rock. Phase one accomplished.

In phase two, we begin to embark on the broadcast side. We score cameras, at least two to start with. In an ideal world we'd find cameras with names like Ikegami ("Icky" or "Ikie", both pronounced "icky"), Sony, or Thomson. In a realistic world, it'll take time to find a good deal on some Icky TV cameras; a good starter camera (and auxiliary camera after you find a good deal on an Icky) is Panasonic's F250. It's a low-end camera but has all the right features, or at least all the important ones, and the price is often right. The camera control units and multicores are harder to find, but you can sometimes find a couple of studio chains of that all put together on Ebay. We lucked into ours, and they're still doing well for what they are.

We need to find a second switcher, one for broadcast. At this point you'll want to do some future planning for number of maximum inputs. The Grass 100/110 family are small-format switchers, only 8 inputs, which is probably fine for projection, but for broadcast you may want more than that. If you can keep it to 10 inputs, an Echolab model SE3 or SE6 may be just what the doctor ordered. If you need more than that, you may have to look at larger-format switchers like Grass 1600, 200, or 250. These carry a larger price tag and eat up more rack space, lots more, but are more better and more versatile.

Now we need also to get that NTSC generator, since using black from switcher 1 to time switcher 2 isn't the best thing in the world. It'll work, but a separate sync gen is better.

Get the rest of the monitors. At minimum you need three monitors total now; even better four. Much more better is a handful more, so you can have dedicated monitors for important things like cameras.

We also need to build up a computer to record video. It needs to be pretty beefy since video is fast, and it needs lots of storage since video is big. It's something like 20 gigs an hour, which reminds me I need to make some more room on my EVS soon; I think I have room for two more weeks on it. You'll need a capture card or outboard box; Grass/Canopus's ADVC series are good Firewire boxes that are affordable. There are capture programs for Windows, Mac, and Linux that work well. I went the Linux route, and it takes more configuration to make it work, but it's very stable and cheap. The choice of platform is yours.

Feed GL into your broadcast switcher and camera base stations now too and time them. It takes a little more work to time two systems together, but if you can keep cable lengths short and similar, it's easier. Loop any common inputs (it's easier if there aren't any, but probably there will be some).

At this point, feeding ancillary areas of the building is a simple task: feed your broadcast program into another channel of DA, and pipe that into the EVS and the nursery and wherever-else.

You also need some sort of intercom between the director who's calling the shots and cutting the feed, and the cameramen. There are a variety of options out there; if you can stick with an RTS two-wire system, it will be easier to interface with professional cameras.

This takes probably three or four months to do, possibly less, and a gradual investment of somewhere between $5K and $7K probably. You want to spend your remaining time working with your camera guys, getting them used to how it all works and how to make good stuff happen. At the end of the six months, you're ready for prime time. And having built a solid infrastructure first, expansions (more computers, tape machines, DVRs, still stores) are a piece of cake to do, especially if you've budgeted physical places in the rack for them to go and places for them to plug into.

If you can befriend a broadcast shop or television station, you can probably find good deals on this old stuff, sometimes better than Ebay. Sometimes they're happy to help nonprofits. If you can get in good with an old analog guy there, an old road warrior, he'll be happy to see the old stuff go to good use. He might also be a candidate for helping you time it out and hook it up. Sometimes the stations and broadcasters are happy for you to help get rid of the old useless analog crap that's getting in their way. After all, it hasn't been on the air for a year or more, and it's not going back on the air, what with February 17 looming like a cloud. It's filling up their storage space, and the amount of stuff you need is probably going to put a small dent into their analog inventory. With a local shop too you take far fewer chances of getting something that doesn't work (on Ebay of course it's always a gamble). They know the history of the gear, you can check it out before you plunge in, and if you have problems you can call them. Not that they should be a full-service outfit for you, but they'll be more willing to help you out with this or that than will be somebody on the other side of the internet.

There you go .. the Crazy Analog Guy's solution. I think it might work for you .. if you just let go of this silly stigma that's fallen over the word "analog" lately.


sk

3:21 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

More Videostuffs.

So a couple of things. First, a shameless plug since most of you who read this could care less about the techno-babble that comes out of my keyboard onto your screen, so I'll do this at first before I lose you completely.

I think the whole church video thing is pretty well together. I've been able for the past month or so to get the video up same-day with no problems .. sometimes even before Dennis gets the audio up. I have 11 weeks of sermons up, and with a little extra time and effort going through the EVS backup from late June I can easily go back even farther. So with that pretty much in place, I'd like invite you to look at it.

- drive your browser to truthcasting.net and pick Crossroads from the list

So now onto the techno-geek stuff. That means you normal people can stop reading now.

See You At The Pole is coming up in a few weeks, and we're going video for it, three cameras. We need to put a flypack together pretty PDQ for it, since that's not very much time. That may well be a This Saturday project, or even a This Friday Night project. It'll either be one hard and two Ps, or three hards. Put it together, analog system; time it; make it pretty.

It would also be super spiffy if the hards and the Ps could use the same base station and OCP and all, so that a configuration change between hards and Ps only requires changing out the camera head; everything on the other end of the triax remains the same. That would be very cool. I don't know if 355s (or 366s) and 55s can interchange like that (the proper handheld counterpart to the 355 is the 355P, but I think all the handhelds available are just Handy-Looky 55s).

I'm also lighting Grease at the high school next month, which means I'm designing it this month. If all goes well, that will be a This Week And Next Week project.

This all means I have two projects going on at the same time: lighting a musical and building a flypack. Oh, right, and work too.

So with that, I should probably do laundry tonight. We need a laundry machine at the office, most definitely.


sk

11:45 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

A Back Is A Terrible Thing.

Kids, be careful with your backs. They're fragile things; you don't want to screw them up.

It's pretty much been a year since I blew up part of mine. Of course, it wasn't by lifting with my back to save my legs, or by falling, or any of that stuff. No, it was soldering some cables. It's doing better now, for the most part at least, but it's still damaged. I know generally what I can do and can't do, and I've learned to do some things differently. I can't lean over work like I used to. I'm more aware of posture, and I do more standing up now. I've also learned to take it easy more than I used to.

Perhaps it will fix itself in time (it has already, to some degree).

In other news, where are all the young-professional-aged techies? Twenty-somethings who have an affinity for production technology. Why can't I find any of them at Crossroads?

I suppose part of it has to do with the TV-technology and theatre-technology folks generally not being church-going folks, and those who are usually wind up at larger churches like Pantego or Fellowship, where there are high production values; none of them likely have heard of this little church in Arlington called Crossroads, or that I'm wanting to find them.

Another part probably has to do with people in that age bracket in a church like ours being generally not attracted to the technology and cool toys; they're more interested in hearing the sermon and worshiping and being involved with relational ministry, since those are more important. And those are important; they're far more important than my little thing, but that doesn't make what I do not be valuable. I'd love to find people who have a knack for this stuff and have them help out every now and then. Every other week, perhaps. Or two weeks on and two weeks off, that's probably better.

If anybody knows where to find another me or Steven or Les, do tell. I'd like to order a couple. I'd love to be able to set up a rotation and not have one week be skeleton crew; a rotation of one "A" team and the other "A" team. Where they're both equally good. So that when I'm out of town on the 16th of November this year, or See You At The Pole Wednesday in a few weeks, I can relax knowing that everything is in good hands and will run well.

Apparently the event here last night and today didn't run all that well. I gave them the crash course Thursday night of how to make stuff happen. The wish list included things like recording audio and video; we quickly cut that down to audio since video would take too much disk space and people. So yeah, Thursday night I soundchecked their band and gave four of them the crash course in operating stuff, and the word I heard this morning was that they really didn't have a clue how to make things run smoothly. I could believe that easily. I'd love to have the people to be able to cover these events in future, to give them quality production, and have it not be me all the time.

I need smart people (or at least people who are as smart as a smart monkey), ideally who have some background in this stuff, but even who are just interested and want to help. Steven's a better teacher than I am, so I'll let him show you how to work stuff, and I can tell you how it works. And while my goal is for everybody to be able to operate everything at a basic level, I'll take specialists or generalists. On a Sunday I'd like to be able to fill these positions:
- audio
- lighting/computers
- projection
- broadcast TD
- 2 cameras

If you can operate a regular computer, you can run words. Even better if you're familiar with the songs. Lighting is usually easy. If you can deal with essentially three basic sliders, you're good.

If you can keep a target in your frame, and can deal with pan/tilt and focus/zoom, you can run a camera. Even better if you have an eye for what looks good.

If you can push a couple of preset buttons and the Go button, and the button that puts the words up or takes them off, you can run the projection switcher. It's not that hard.

Broadcast switcher and audio are harder, because there are more things to do. But on broadcast, most of the time it's two cameras, so if you're on Two, your next shot is something from One. Audio, just make it sound right.

In short, I can train. Or rather, I can explain in technobabble and Steven can translate to English. If you're interested, I'd love to have you. I'd love to be able to start up a training program again (the one that failed dismally every time I tried before).


sk

2:48 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Ooh! A New Toy!

The other day I got in the latest toy to play with: an Allen & Heath GL4.



It's pretty. It's about time that Les and I had a "real" console.

We have by now replaced all of the parts that made up our first PA, the one we built five years ago at Cooper Park. And not merely replaced: we have stepped up. The GL4 is the latest element in the upgrade, being a top-notch professional analog audio console. It and the GA32(s) are a huge improvement over the Behringer digital board we had only a year ago. Now a snake with a monitor split is in the inventory too, as are much better top boxes and amplifiers and outboard.

We have a GL4!

I've dreamed of this for years. The GL4 is the immediate predecessor to the GL4000, which early on became my favorite console. The GL4K has 10 auxes, 8 groups, 8 programmable mute groups, and mute snapshot automation. The GL4 lacks only the mute automation scenes and a handful of minor improvements. The core of the two consoles are identical. I've been telling myself for probably 8 years now that sometime, when we make it big probably, I want to have a GL4K. Now we have a GL4, which is effectively the same thing. And in fact, since it has unbalanced inserts (the 4K added balanced inserts, which are arguably better at the expense of requiring two cables to each inserted signal processor rather than one, so we'd have to rebuild our insert snakes), the GL4 is better for us.

How did we land a GL4? It was a deal on the Interweb that I couldn't pass up. We found this one for pretty much half of what I'd expect to pay for it (or its GL4K counterpart). Two weeks later, it's here. This is a very cool thing.

Hopefully soon here I'll also be able to upgrade the cameras at the church. We'll see how that goes. What, real cameras? How crazy! They'd be 15 to 20 years old, mind you, but still real ones. They did football 20 years ago. Goodness, they were still doing football and golf and all 10 years ago. They could be doing it today if it weren't for the whole digital TV thing. The three-sixty-sixes I tested out today perform surprisingly well in low-light conditions, and at the church they'd be in moderately low light (for a television camera, at least). Ooh, and their OCPs have iris controls that work! and shading controls that work! and filter selectors that work! It's absolutely crazy!

Today I also test-drove manual zoom. It's actually not all that bad. It's certainly simpler than servo zoom.

Hopefully soon the problem I'll be having at the church is finding space to put these camera base stations. I think I need a 16-space rack for just the base stations and power supplies. It's a good problem to have, though.


sk

1:47 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

We Can’t Afford To Do It Right, But We Can Afford To Do It Over.

That's a common criticism of churches in regard to anything technical. The average church goes through something like three or four sound systems chiefly because they didn't do it right at the beginning.

Three stories.

Recent thread on Churchmedia about lighting, that began something like this:

We have about 10K to spend on fixtures, but we don't want to buy the good ones; we want the cheap crap from China, because we figure we can re-buy the whole thing three times over with these disposable crap lights, so we don't care about them lasting long time.

We bought some fixtures and rewired them, putting long lengths of Home Depot rubber cable in place of the short three-wires-in-a-sleeve. Some of the lights pop the breakers on the dimmers. What gives?

Here's some consumer home-stereo crap that we want to use as key components in a professional installation. What do we need to make it work, fast?

10:37 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

How You Drive This Thing?

So I got the LBM4896 together and started to test it out. It didn't work very well at first, what with it not coming on at all and such. After a few minutes of looking around inside, I was finally able to isolate and repair the problem: the ribbon cable which connects all of the panel modules and circuit boards together was not plugged into the power supply board. It works better if you plug it in.

So, power supply connected to all the boards now, I fired it up, and would you believe that it came to life? Not in the literal sense: it didn't pull a Pinocchio; it's more in the figurative sense, where the electric charges started moving through the circuit boards and logic chips and indicators. And you would also believe that it did something useful? (after all, stuff blowing up does qualify as electric charges moving through everything): it did actually do something useful! This, by the way, is a Good Thing.

I had read the manual on the board some time back and found it to be rather logical, but not necessarily straightforward, to drive. After all, I'm used to ETC syntax, and this is old Strand syntax. The two are similar but different. ETC's "release" command is simple: select channels, press [Release]; Strand's "release" is also simple and makes sense, but it's different: select channels, press [At] [Enter] [Enter] (or actually, [@] [*] [*], since the Enter key is denoted with an asterisk): the first Enter sets them up to release, and asks for confirmation by pressing Enter again. Makes sense, but different.

Similarly, on an ETC board the "At" preceding the [Full] key is optional: pressing [Full] implies At. Strand, At is not implicit with [Full], so you do have to press [At] [Full], not just [Full].

Then there are some things that are just plain strange. ETC's fade Up and Down times are each written separately, as [Time] uptime [Enter] downtime [Enter], and omitting the downtime makes it take the same as the uptime ([Time] N [Enter] [Enter]). Strand instead does [Time] N [*], and a split crossfade is done by [Time] up [And] down [*]. Kinda odd, but makes a little sense.

I suppose I'm impressed that I was able to make sense of it without having driven one before or RTFM within the past month or two. That board was a good buy. It's even better if I can plug it up to dimmers and it works!

I still haven't figured out how to set a default cue time. Maybe that's in the manual.


sk

4:11 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

In Which We Make 20-Year-Old Technology Work.

This evening's experiment is reasonably simple: see if I can make one of the Lightbaords M work. Probably the experiment will be conducted on the 4896, being the most useful of the two boards.

This ought to be reasonably simple, but with technology as old as this is, you never know. LBM is, after all, 20 years old, maybe a little more even. Perhaps we'll even find a road case for the thing. I'm thinking there's a fair chance that it will end up going on the road with us for See You At The Pole (SYATP) in September, along with whatever video package we put together.

Which, speaking of video, we had initially planned to bring in a broadcast truck and do it professionally this year. The highlight event for SYATP 2008 is an illusionist, you see, where typically it's a band. So this year instead of dragging out PA to do the band, we're dragging out video. It will likely end up being three studio cameras and the Grass 110, and then a few frame syncs for the consumer (computer) stuff, and a DA tray for good measure. Maybe a couple of tape machines, and maybe even an EVS if we throw one together since it's simple enough.

Another event for tonight: poking around on my EVS to see if I can export consumer DVDs better. I've figured out that the DVDs I've made will play fine in a hardware DVD player or a Linux computer, but a Mac doesn't understand what kind of coaster you've put in its drive, and I suspect the same might be true under Windows. We'll see how it turns out.


sk

11:44 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Why Is Finding Church Tech Crew So Hard?

I suppose it's really not all that terribly hard: after all, I have several youth who help regularly (if not all the time). But non-youth, why can't I find any of them who are interested, willing to help, and good at it? Sometimes I've found up to two of those attributes, but never all three. College people would be perfect, but for some reason they all seem to run away from the technology.

In other news, I find as I look at my office or the church or my compartment that I collect things. Electronic things in particular. Am I turning into my generation's geek-hermit, the guy who finds friendship in the computers and tape machines and transmitters and lightboards because there's not much in terms of actual people? It's possible. Or, judging by the office, closet, and compartment, quite probable. Normal people do social things; I tinker with (often old) electronics.

On Wednesday and Sunday nights I look forward to actually eating dinner with people after the evening's youth thing is done. Sadly, tonight there was no dinner. So what do I do? I go up to the office for a few hours to tinker around with the Video-DVD project. I hadn't planned on it beforehand, but I also had nothing else to do, so up to the office I went. I find I spend more time during the week with Things than I do with People.

Is it curable? Probably no, judging from history. I suppose that's the hand I've been dealt, so I might as well play it. There are, however, two positives to this hand of cards.

In positive news, today I added a new quote to the quote book.


sk

6:32 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Ready Three... Take Three...

So this past Friday we had at the church a lock-in all-nighter back-to-school thing for the youth. It went well, but perhaps the highlight of the evening was the band. Abandon Kansas, who Steven's talked about for some time now, came in to do an hourlong set shortly after midnight. And there we finally got to do two things I've wanted to do for quite some time.

We opened the PA up to Eleven. On a normal Sunday it's running at Nine, and sometimes on Wednesdays I open it up to Ten. But for full-out rock-and-roll, it's only proper to run the PA at Eleven, and by golly it sounded good.

We ran IMAG. "IMAG", of course, is short for "image magnification", a fancy church term for putting live video on the screens. Of course I ran the EVS and tape and everything, and that turned out pretty good too.

We ran three cameras. Finally, three cameras: two with studio kits on tripods, and one rover.

It was very nice to be able to do that. Now we just need some better cameras and longer lenses, and maybe a jib, and more and better light, and we'll be set for hosting and filming concerts. We are amazingly close to being able to do something like you'd see on your favorite band's Live Concert DVD.

Live cutting is very fun. There's no "We'll fix it in Post": it is what it is. Live sports and The Olympics are very impressive from a technical perspective: there's a guy in the OB truck cutting that live. I'm not sure how many cameras they're typically working with; I'd guess a dozen or so on your favorite Rangers game; much more on any one venue at The Olympics (the total is something like 1100 top-of-the-line HD cameras, LDK8000s, and over 30 OB trucks). That's really quite staggering, and there's a guy in each venue cutting them down in real-time. And the average viewer expects it to be always good, always right.

Camera Two needs more stinking lens. Actually, I could probably get an ENG lens with a double-extender, but that eats up two F-stops of light, and I need all the light I can getting through the glass to the imagers. I can't lose two F-stops; they're running WFO already, and I still want a little more.

Oh well; there's room for improvement.


sk

10:04 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment