Initial Equipment Review: Part 2

I decided to tackle something that I know very little about (a) because it will hopefully be a shorter post for me to write and (b) it will hopefully be a shorter post for you to read ;)  Please note that some of the links I are close to what we've got... I don't know the exact model numbers or specs, sorry!

Cameras

We have four Ikegami HD cameras and Canon lenses for our show.  All the specifics?  I'm not sure :)  I know that the CCUs give us a greater amount of control than we've had in the past.  They look incredible!  It's pretty amazing that we can see pretty much from goal line to goal line with these things ;)  We have the typical broadcast setup of two build-ups/studio configs (one wide game follow, one iso),

In addition to the Ikis, we have a Panasonic P2 ENG camera that we can convert for our show.  This past Friday, we had our cameraman between the benches.  He'll probably be there again this Friday, as we do not get first pick of this spot during the regular season.  The nice thing about this camera is that for ENG work, it uses the P2 cards, just like the handhelds we bought last year.  This really helps our workflow because there are no tapes :)  Everything is file-based, and we can bring the clips right in to edit with them.

We had a few issues with them, including setting the auto iris in too narrow of a range.  Some of it is still trying to get used to them.  The cameras are, after all, the least used piece of equipment, as we only really get to use them on game nights (save the P2 cameras we use for shoots/ENG).

Another thing that I didn't expect was the "bend" in the image.  It's not severe, but you can certainly notice (zoomed way out) that the boards on the opposite side have a bend in them.  It's almost as if it has a wide-angle lens on it.  Which, I guess makes sense ;)  It's a wide-screen image!  I guess I wasn't expecting it... AND, you can't really notice it that much at even a small amount of zoom.

For those of you actually keeping score, you realize that I haven't mentioned the robotic camera yet.  If so, kudos to you.  And, you really need to get a life outside of reading this blog ;)

The camera itself is a tiny body Panasonic.  Again, I do not know many specifics.  As I write this, Cam Mate is currently re-designing our setup.  The company primarily deals with cameras on jibs, with the longest runs being around 80 feet or so.  The run that needed to be made in our case is closer to the 500-foot range.  There isn't enough power getting down the line to completely control the camera and get a solid signal.  We have tested the camera with several different cable lengths, as well.  We actually got a cable made for a jib (roughly 40 feet or so, I believe), and everything worked perfectly.  So, we know it works and we're working with Cam Mate to get it resolved.  We've been excited about this camera for some time, but we have serial number 0001 of the camera controller... it's going to take some time to sort it out.  We have several people working on this - from our engineer to DSI to Cam Mate - to have it up and running as soon as possible.

Audio

The last thing I think I will tackle for the day is our audio console.  We have a Yamaha M7CL, which is the little brother of the board in the production side of things.  So far, no complaints other than I'm not used to a digital board ;)  I'm fairly well versed in the analog side of things... the menu structure of digital boards never makes much sense to me :)  I'm learning, though!  We are also still trying to get the levels set for in-game.  Unfortunately, there's not much way to do it except... well, in-game.  So, for that, I'm thankful for pre-season :)

Potpourri

Yep. It's that time of year, all right. The days just keep getting longer. The 10 PM mark was breached today. That, after two weeks of 8ish nights. You know you're up against the wall when Preview Day comes around.

Tomorrow, we get to show off all the stuff we've been working on to "the Wolfpack" (generic term for all those involved who have a say in our final production). It's been a whirlwind, especially with DSI trying to tie up all the loose ends before Friday.

On some other notes:
* Our [HD] cameras were fired up this week and look very nice. I saw one of them with the star filter in and, even in the minimal lighting of the arena bowl, and it was pretty :)

* We also fired up our old cameras at the football stadium. It's good to see everything lighting up and signals getting to where they need to go.

* I think I have a pretty good grasp on the Switcher (thanks, Brady). It's doing most of the things I want it to. The things that it isn't doing... well, those are probably just user error ;) Good thing I've got the manuals for late night reading material!

* The Centrio Multiviewer is pretty cool. Being able to customize things to our liking (and the ease of changing it if we need to) is very nice. We've had a couple of hiccups with it, but I'm pretty certain it's because we're taxing the system pretty hard trying to lay things out, try different layouts and such. When we get it to our liking, it'll probably just take a good restart to make it happy.

There are only about a million things that are going on right now, but this is about all that my brain can process for today.

Another random thought: the Hurricanes just re-vamped the website. Check it out: http://hurricanes.nhl.com.

Red Bull, Anyone?

Why is it that I can't get around to starting this until nearly midnight? You think you fall asleep READING it... sheesh... ;)

I do have some cool stuff coming down the pike. I have to run it through the channels first, but stay tuned within the next couple of days for something really cool :) Have I piqued your interest enough yet? Good! Now, stay awake!

First, I'd like to give a shout out to Destination Wake Forest for drumming up interest in what we've got going on here. Thanks so much for the mention!

Now to the geeky stuff:

I got to see the camera that we're going to be using on the robotic head.

It's simple, but it works :) Something I learned about the robo head that I thought was interesting... Stay with me, I don't know how much I can simplify :)

Basically (I know, ha ha), there's fiber running from the control room to the robo head for the HD camera signal. However, the signal from the camera actually comes out HD SDI (BNC Connector) and plugs straight into the head. Then, the signal is converted into light and transmitted through the optical slip rings and actually exits the head as fiber! I figured there would be some elaborate external "box" we'd have to mount on the side of the camera for conversion - NO! The head actually converts it for us :) Streamlining the process is good!

A part of this whole process is the camera control station. This is where the color/iris (brightness), etc. for all of the cameras can be set remotely.

The large monitor (which is identical to those on the monitor wall - 46"er!) is a source monitor driven by the multiviewer. The smaller monitor just below and to the left is the "match monitor" (to make sure all the cameras look the same).

Notice the four identical RCPs (remote control panels): those are for our four main "manned" cameras.

The medium-sized RCP is for an additional camera that we can use for our show or that we can convert for ENG work. If the opportunity presents itself, I will try to go into more detail on all the cameras other than the robo :)

Okay... for those who are still awake... or have unexploded brains...

We have our main monitors on the wall that will show the video sources through the multiviewer. It looks good to see the big guys on the wall :)

It's not quite finished yet, but it's certainly closer! WOOO!

Someone also asked me why I'm putting these crazy watermarks on all my pictures. I noticed early on that my photos were showing up in places that I didn't put them... and no one knew where they came from... So, I know they're annoying, but I am doing this so that I can still get credit for staying awake writing all this stuff down :) It's inevitable that these pictures will be re-circulated elsewhere... All I ask is that you give the blog credit. The address is http://canesvision-hd.blogspot.com/. You could also promo the Twitter address @CVHD.

Thanks!

Now that the mean stuff is out of the way, and because I got so many good comments about the Canes picture, I wanted to make sure I spread the love to the NC State crowd!

Special framing just for you! Includes the '74 and '83 Banners :)

I can almost hear a distant "WOLF"... "PACK"...

DSI Design Review - Day 1

I know I'm not going to do this justice, but I wanted to get some of the more "interesting" items (at least some of the things I understood ;) ) from the meeting today with Diversified.

I also don't know exact model numbers for some things, but I will try to link to them and I will re-post things that may be incorrect or incomplete.

One of the biggest items from the meeting today - in my estimation - is that we are going to get a new product from CamMate that will allow for a full 360° continuous rotation for our camera mounted under the scoreboard (currently referred to as "Camera 5"). Our current robotic camera is s.....l.....o.....w...... and is used primarily for an overhead of puck drop/tip off, teams taking the ice/floor and crowd/color shots. It also only goes about 330° around and we have to position the dead spot somewhere the lens isn't long enough to reach in the crowd.

The new camera will actually be used primarily for game follow. We will not have to worry about dead zones anymore because we will actually be able to spin the camera continuously in any one direction until we get tired of doing it ;) We were looking at a Panasonic head that was about $3K cheaper, but it had hard stops at 400° (more than a full rotation, which is good, but it still stops), so if the operator "loses" where he is, he could get burned by "hitting the wall".

Side note: since the scoreboard camera will be utilized primarily for game action, we will actually have a roving, sixth camera for most events used for fan/color shots more than our current setup.

A nifty by product of this (and of us being a 720p world - which makes us compatible with our main broadcast rights holder that holds the contract for the next four years at least - FS Carolinas), is that TV broadcast can now use our camera for live or replay as desired. We are actually putting CanesVision and Broadcast program feeds at this station so the operator can tell if he's "live" on Broadcast even if he only has tally for the CanesVision show.

Okay, hopefully the other couple of issues will be quicker. At least I'm not boring the less than super-uber geeks with signal path stuff (that's still fuzzy to me anyway...)

We will be utilizing Harris X75 Frame Syncs as utility up/down/cross convert signals used in production. While our cameras will all be run at native resolution (again, 720p), other signals - such as our present analog 4:3 NTSC cameras which will still be utilized for NC State Football - will pass through these to lock to our production. I noticed at Harris' website that the X75s are "obsolete"... I will be bringing this up at the meeting tomorrow :)

Another nifty feature in the control room is our "safety net" of redundancy to our production. We will be utilizing a Harris Predator multiviewer as a backup in case the main multiviewer, Centrio, crashes during a production. The Predator (linked above is the Predator2 - unsure of our exact model on order...) will receive 12 signals that can keep us afloat in the event of a failure.

The nice thing is, these 12 signals are direct feeds into the switcher, meaning the Centrio AND our routing system can both fail and the sources will still hit the switcher and the Predator to keep us live. Of course, if the switcher goes down, you're screwed anyway and we'll have to get a nice spinning logo from our Dak operator out front ;) If interested, the 12 sources designated as essential are Cameras 1-6, Crossfire 1 ("FIRE"), Crossfire 3 ("VDOC"), Miranda XG ("KERMIT"), EVS Out (single out, dual channel), Preview & Program. This gives us all of our manned cameras, including robo, our graphics, clip playback and replay source... everything we need for a barebones production :)

The outputs of the Predator will live on the "B" side (alternate input) of one of the five monitors on the monitor wall & out at the producer's position on the front deck overlooking the arena bowl. Should the Centrio go down for whatever reason (it does run on Windows...), it would just take a few seconds to flip the monitor over to the alternate input for the backup system.

Other issues such as where each of the Editors lives for pre-production was hashed out today. All of the Editors will be in the Control Room now, and will have mostly-adjacent desks.

In addition, we also went position-by-position for the game-night operation positions to make sure they were just right. Let me tell you... having TBC on board will make a big difference! Not only in functionality, but it will also look friggin' sweet!

Tomorrow is more of the same, but we're also meeting with some other people throughout the day, so I'm not sure how much will be interesting to share, but if it is even remotely good, I'll probably put it in writing.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I know some of this is a snooze, but when it's all said and done, it will be LIGHTYEARS (pardon the fiber-optic pun...) ahead of where we are now.