What I learnt from 3D conference and Penrose Market
In June, we will be filming a live broadcast called "The Degree Show". It's a collaboration of all the different degrees at Ravensbourne, including fashion shows and lots of filmed . As the engineers, we are tasked to put the show on freeview, and make sure everything the producers want to do is possible.
My job is line, as that's the role I took on during the 3D conference and Penrose Market I've blogged about before. From doing these, I have learnt a lot I can take forwards.
1) Cables fail.
Over the course of the shows, I have a ridiculous amount of cables fail on me. This has taught me the importance of redundancy. Instead of running around trying to find new cables to replace broken ones, I will make sure I set aside different cables, so I can find and replace cables fast and efficiently.
2) Planning is everything.
Detailed planning is essential. You and your colleagues must be on the same wavelength as part of a team, and to do that, they must fully understand the plan.
3) Test, test and then test again!
Cables must be put through rigorous tests to make sure they are durable for the task.We found that a lot of BNC connections that some of the engineers attached to the coax, weren't crimped properly, meaning when attached to the wallbox, they were easily pulled apart, or enough to make the connection dodgy. We need to make sure any cables we use are up to scratch quality wise.
I've definitely taken a lot more, but these are the main things that stood out for me
Monday, 30 April 2012
Monday, 23 April 2012
Saturday, 21 April 2012
3D storytelling conference
On 22nd and 23rd of March, a conference was being held to celebrate the new innovations in 3D technology. This was hosted by our university with some of the tutors being responsible for the event as a whole.
My role was once again Head of Lines, as this was another opportunity for me to practice on a large scale event ready for Rave 2012 at the end of the year.
Lines wasn't easy for this event, there were a few complicated lines run that we had to sort out to try and make look as neat as possible.
There was a camera on the Mezzanine Floor, which doesn't have a wallbox for any connectivity. This meant I had to get inventive and run a cable from the welcome space on the bottom floor, along the floor, up the wall, up the side to the mezz, and into the area that the camera was positioned. I was aided by my 3 lines assistants which meant that the line was in place within 15 minutes.
I had to allocate long coax cable for the run from room 209/210 wallbox to the 3 cameras that were in room 212. This was a vast distance and after testing all the cables beforehand, one still broke during the install. To solve this, I decided just to run a new cable and keep the broken one there, but labelled. We made sure the new cable was working fine before running it. After the cameras were set up and connected, we couldn't get a picture from them on the assigns on our vision mixer. We had patched the signal from the wallbox to CAR straight into the assigns. We figured out that we had hit the digital cliff, and solved the problem by using 3 repeaters to extend the range of our signal.
We we asked to produce a picture of TX on level 1, where there was an overflow space. We decided to run a cable from the wallbox to our connection boxes for the projectors, and convert the HD/SDI signal to one that the projector would work with. However after testing, we discovered the BNC connectors in the wallbox we planned to use weren't working and couldn't be fixed. We had to scramble round to find connectivity in one of the edit suite rooms on level 1, and take a connection from there by over patching it in CAR. we could then run a cable to the projector from there. This took a lot longer than planned, and pretty much tied up the whole evening we had planned for other things.
The other cameras used were ones looking over floors 4 and 0 from high up. These were a simple install, and we had no problems patching the signal in CAR.
NEXT: What I have learnt from the 3D conference for use in Rave2012
My role was once again Head of Lines, as this was another opportunity for me to practice on a large scale event ready for Rave 2012 at the end of the year.
Lines wasn't easy for this event, there were a few complicated lines run that we had to sort out to try and make look as neat as possible.
There was a camera on the Mezzanine Floor, which doesn't have a wallbox for any connectivity. This meant I had to get inventive and run a cable from the welcome space on the bottom floor, along the floor, up the wall, up the side to the mezz, and into the area that the camera was positioned. I was aided by my 3 lines assistants which meant that the line was in place within 15 minutes.
I had to allocate long coax cable for the run from room 209/210 wallbox to the 3 cameras that were in room 212. This was a vast distance and after testing all the cables beforehand, one still broke during the install. To solve this, I decided just to run a new cable and keep the broken one there, but labelled. We made sure the new cable was working fine before running it. After the cameras were set up and connected, we couldn't get a picture from them on the assigns on our vision mixer. We had patched the signal from the wallbox to CAR straight into the assigns. We figured out that we had hit the digital cliff, and solved the problem by using 3 repeaters to extend the range of our signal.
We we asked to produce a picture of TX on level 1, where there was an overflow space. We decided to run a cable from the wallbox to our connection boxes for the projectors, and convert the HD/SDI signal to one that the projector would work with. However after testing, we discovered the BNC connectors in the wallbox we planned to use weren't working and couldn't be fixed. We had to scramble round to find connectivity in one of the edit suite rooms on level 1, and take a connection from there by over patching it in CAR. we could then run a cable to the projector from there. This took a lot longer than planned, and pretty much tied up the whole evening we had planned for other things.
The other cameras used were ones looking over floors 4 and 0 from high up. These were a simple install, and we had no problems patching the signal in CAR.
NEXT: What I have learnt from the 3D conference for use in Rave2012
Saturday, 14 April 2012
Penrose Market 11/2011
Back in November, our Engineering Group was asked to provide coverage of a market event happening at our university. We had already decided our Roles for the big 'Rave-live' project later in the year, where we broadcast of Freeview for a few days. My Role is head of Lines, basically managing the connectivity all around the uni, making sure cabling is up to scratch, and that all cameras have sync.
Having been an assistant to this role last year, I felt comfortable with what I had to accomplish.
I was given a £500 budget to buy cable, tape and any other tools we might need throughout the event.
This was quite a difficult budget to manage, and would have been so easy to go over with, as I had to balance quantity of stuff with quality of stuff! Couldn't just buy the cheapest there is, otherwise it wouldn't have worked!
However I did make a few mistakes when ordering things online. I brought what I believed to be XLR cabling, which is what the picture sure looked like, only it turned out to be very thin balanced microphone cabling, not quite what I thought! I also underestimated how many BNC connectors we would go through, having brought about a hundred, and in the end having to use some I had reserved for Rave-Live!
It was also my job to work out where cameras would be positioned, and how they would connect to the uni's infrastructure. We have wallboxes at various points throughout the uni, unfortunately they never seem to be where you need them most! After some juggling about we worked out where the cameras would go, and how to get the sync and signal to and from them. We have a Black and Burst DA in our CAR, and some of the wallboxes have B&B straight to them, meaning getting sync to the cameras wasn't an issue as long as we had the correct cables of the correct length!
During the event, a few problems ensued.
Even after testing all our cables, some broke between the time they were tested, and event day. This taught me that I need to test a few times, and make sure the connectors aren't too dodgy.
On the ground floor, the management team wanted cameras roaming throughout the market. However in our welcome space, the only wallboxes are in the floor, and most of them were under market stalls. We warned the management team they would need at least 3-4 cable bashers, otherwise it wouldn't be safe, but they turned up with a cameraman and one assistant each. This meant we could only have one roaming camera, as the cables trailing over the floor needed to have people attending them, otherwise innocent market people could easily have fallen over and hurt themselves. Roaming cameras are going to be something we need to watch out for in other events, especially in that area.
All-in-all the market went really well. And after the first day full of teething problems our coverage was excellent.
Having been an assistant to this role last year, I felt comfortable with what I had to accomplish.
I was given a £500 budget to buy cable, tape and any other tools we might need throughout the event.
This was quite a difficult budget to manage, and would have been so easy to go over with, as I had to balance quantity of stuff with quality of stuff! Couldn't just buy the cheapest there is, otherwise it wouldn't have worked!
However I did make a few mistakes when ordering things online. I brought what I believed to be XLR cabling, which is what the picture sure looked like, only it turned out to be very thin balanced microphone cabling, not quite what I thought! I also underestimated how many BNC connectors we would go through, having brought about a hundred, and in the end having to use some I had reserved for Rave-Live!
It was also my job to work out where cameras would be positioned, and how they would connect to the uni's infrastructure. We have wallboxes at various points throughout the uni, unfortunately they never seem to be where you need them most! After some juggling about we worked out where the cameras would go, and how to get the sync and signal to and from them. We have a Black and Burst DA in our CAR, and some of the wallboxes have B&B straight to them, meaning getting sync to the cameras wasn't an issue as long as we had the correct cables of the correct length!
During the event, a few problems ensued.
Even after testing all our cables, some broke between the time they were tested, and event day. This taught me that I need to test a few times, and make sure the connectors aren't too dodgy.
On the ground floor, the management team wanted cameras roaming throughout the market. However in our welcome space, the only wallboxes are in the floor, and most of them were under market stalls. We warned the management team they would need at least 3-4 cable bashers, otherwise it wouldn't be safe, but they turned up with a cameraman and one assistant each. This meant we could only have one roaming camera, as the cables trailing over the floor needed to have people attending them, otherwise innocent market people could easily have fallen over and hurt themselves. Roaming cameras are going to be something we need to watch out for in other events, especially in that area.
All-in-all the market went really well. And after the first day full of teething problems our coverage was excellent.
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