Coming along

Wow... things are going slow tonight. It took me about an hour just to upload the pictures for this post. YIKES... Since I'm running on borrowed time, I'll be quick :)

Several things are going on all at the same time right now (imagine that). First, Engineeringland is starting to fill up more and more. It's getting harder to see through the racks. But that's a good thing!

Engineering Racks

Close up of what will be our video shading (camera matching) station.

The match monitor is up top and the CCUs are down below.

Something I think is amazing is the size of the video switcher's brains. The previous switcher took up the better part of a full rack (roughly 6.5 feet tall), and now it's shoved down into a 3RU box (about 5.25 inches tall). There is a tally display controller that is about the same size. Overall, I'm impressed by the size of the unit!

Switcher "Brains" are highlighted.

Another nifty item that came in today is the Robotic camera head and controller. I referenced this in a much older post, but it's finally here. I can't wait to see it in action. Fast, HD game coverage from right above center ice. Sweet!

Nice case... too bad the mount will go under the Megatron and never go back in there!

I'm sure we can find something to store in here. Whatever it is will stay watertight ;)

The camera controller that will live in the Control Room.

This box was custom built for CanesVision.

Note the finishing touch of the Canes logo in the corner ;)

And finally, the some of the monitor wall monitors were un-crated today. DSI is waiting on some extra fiber connectivity to get signal run to the wall, but they started putting it together today!

Staging in the hall.

It's a long way to the top...

One is better than none ;)

On a side note: sorry to any of you that were expecting the Megatron to be active during Select-A-Seat. There were plans to use it, but Daktronics had to come back and resolve some power issues. The boards were off most of the day today and may be off quite a bit tomorrow, as well.

Hopefully soon we can start to post some more images of the board clad in Canes & NC State garb, but know (a) we aren't going to tip our hand too much on what's to come in the season and (b) we're busy rebuilding stuff from the ground up so it may be a couple of weeks :)

Thanks to all who are keeping tabs on us. We are still just as excited as you are!

Shaping Up

Things are begining to take shape in the control room :) It's cool to see the equipment going in. Each day, the stack of boxes in the hall is getting gradually smaller while the room itself is looking more like "home".

It's been a few days since my last post because of Daktronics training. It was a good session, and actually a day longer than originally planned. We have enough now to really start working on creative content to get things lighting up the right way. There are still some issues and a ton of growing pains, but we're coming along.

Since the last post, the router panels, audio monitors at each station and workstation (desktop/GUI stations) have been mounted.

July 16: Router, Intercom & Audio Monitor placed in the first bay (from the left), source monitors in the second...

July 16: By the end of the day, individual GUI monitors were mounted.

July 16: Also by day's end, the mounting brackets for the monitor wall were in place. Power strips are ready to go, as well. Note that one of the Marshalls (used in the consoles) is already living in it's place on the monitor wall, as well.

July 17: Early on, the consoles were supplied with power. Here you see a station that utilizes two router panels (for source selection) and an intercom panel is sandwiched in between.

July 17: Other items were wired up and turned on, including the Marshall monitors (glowing blue here). Signal and power have been run to the workstation GUI monitors, but the machines they connect to have yet to be installed in the racks :)

July 17: A closer look at a powered up console.

Next week, the monitor wall monitors should go up. That will be a fun picture day ;)

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

The Equipment Has Landed

Three days before the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11's launch (no real correlation other than date... and the corny title... and a little history perspective...), CanesVision's HD eqiupment has landed at the RBC Center!

[Equipement Photos: July 14]

Monitor Wall Monitors! 46"ers... times 5 :)

Video Switcher

Replay System

Audio Console

Last week, a few equipment racks landed, including the Daktronics rack (that was previously moved to my office - now finding its final resting place), the closed-circuit TV rack (sending signal to the concourses, suites), the demarcation rack (basically, termination point for every cable in the control room... I know that's over-simplification, but... still...) and a couple of blank racks to be filled in... well... now :)

[July 10] Daktronics Rack

[July 10] Demarcation Rack on Left; CATV Rack on Right

On Monday [July 13], the equipment showed up and DSI's on-site crew got to work pulling cable.

DSI brought five total racks, built with some time-consuming connections such as the audio & video patch panels among other things. Other equipment such as the frame syncs and multiviewer "brains" were placed in the racks, as well.

[Remaining pictures, July 14]

Equipment racks filling in

Tally Display Controller

Frame Syncs (responsible for up/down/cross conversion of signals)

Today, the first of the equipement started going into the consoles :) This is an exciting thing for me personally as it will start to feel more like a real control room.

The intercom panels, the router panels and the audio monitors for each station were placed today.

First equipment in the consoles :) Intercom Panel.

This is a 12-channel box.

Even though it's not in it's final place, here's a

32-channel intercom panel in comparison.

Also, the video monitors for each position were placed.

Used as alternate Program (what's on the main videoboard), source (what each position's machine is outputting to the switcher) or even router-fed (selectable) inputs in each position.

While all of this has been going on, several of us have been getting some training with the new Daktronics system.... which is ironically a lot like the old system.... just with a prettier board to play stuff on :)

[Misc Photos: July 14]

Another look at some of the consoles

"Turret" for the Technical Director, including intercom,

rasterizer (digital vectorscope/waveform), etc.

The 32-channel intercom won't be there ;)

From the inside

Special thanks to Chad for posting in my absence! I think it's a good thing that we're documenting all of this for posterity, if nothing else! Of course, some people obviously find it interesting, because according to Google Analytics, this blog - that I thought maybe 15 or 20 people would find interesting - now has over 4,600 page views from more than 1,400 unique visitors from across 36 states and even Canada... no pressure to get my info right, eh? :)

The Daktronics boards were physically completed on Sunday! Here is what the completed videoboard looks like - close to the ground, at least!

Man... that's a monster!

From the corner

Catwalks inside the videoboard allow for maintenance access and such.
Much more user friendly than the previous version!

You can certainly notice the "high school locker" look I referenced previously...
Also, note the cable bin in the lower left... this is for the cable to spool itself when the board is raised.

And this is how it's looked for most of the day. We have seen so much progress that the next few days will be rather "slow" for us... The electricians are hooking up all of the power and such to the boards today and I'm sure into tomorrow.

As for the control room, we are in the holding pattern for equipment. We got in some rack bases today; we'll get more tomorrow... Slowly, all the equipment that is meant to "drop ship" to us will begin trickling in over the next couple of weeks. DSI will have the site supervisor and some personnel beginning on July 6th(ish), with the full team in house beginning July 13th. Their main objective - wrangle all of the equipment, stick it in the room and wire it up to work!

Not too difficult, right?

So, if I'm a bit absent from posting, it may just be because there's not much to say during the "slow" parts... basically there's nothing new to take pictures of ;) But, rest assured, there's plenty of work going on from the inside!

Day 1 is Done!

And we're all sore....

We mainly got our editing stations out and moved down the hallway. We've been assigned to three broadcast booths used for home and away TV/radio.

The reason you don't see much by way of consoles or monitors on the wall leaving just yet is because that all starts tomorrow. Our engineer begins surgically removing most of this through next week.

Our DSI project manager will be on-site Monday for a walk through. Some time Monday afternoon we will be shipping five tall racks (similar to the ones on the monitor wall) to Seattle so DSI can actually pre-build some equipment into the racks. This means there will actually be multi-tasking by several parties and we'll be getting things done simultaneously. Then, the racks will pretty much "drop in" and bolt to the rack bases and DSI will wire it up. I know, it's an over-simplification, but it's the flow of the project, at least.

Control Room - From Entry Door

Edit Station - one of the most drastic changes


Front Deck - From Producers position toward Matrix/House Production



Front Deck - From Matrix Position toward Producer/NHL Replay


The "Darkroom" - forgot to get a "before" of this one... oops!
Another one of the drastic changes!

Audio Room

Monitor Wall - from Audio Room door


Some of the aftermath in the Press Row hallway...
that's for tomorrow!

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.

On the Table

Something substantial here in CanesVision has happened and I needed to share. We are getting actual technical furniture from TBC!

It may not seem like a big deal, but it is a rather big victory for CanesVision. The technical consoles are the "desks" that all of the production equipment positions are located at in the broadcast environment: i.e.--Director, Technical Director, replay, graphics, etc.

Up until yesterday, the debate was going on about using a technical console manufacturer or having someone coach someone through the steps to build a console from scratch. There are many issues to consider when building something like this from the ground up, including rack units and rail configuration, as well as power accessibility and cable management.

A contractor had originally stated that he could produce these consoles for a significant amount less than what we could purchase the TBC consoles for. However, through the course of several discussions with them and TBC contacting them directly, they were able to strike a deal and the furniture for the broadcast positions will be honest-to-goodness technical furniture!

On hold

The Carolina Hurricanes are returning to the Eastern Conference Finals for the second time in four years!

That means no demolition tomorrow! The new room can wait ;)

DSI will be back in town this week for a final review of everything. Some items are already purchased/decided on and others are still to be finalized. Hopefully there will be something interesting to write about next week!

For now, GO CANES!

The [Not So] Beginning

I'm creating this blog in hopes that I can update throughout the summer on CanesVision's conversion to High Definition. Not sure who will find this interesting or useful, but I hope to post at least weekly throughout the next few months to keep readers aware of the changes coming to the RBC Center in the fall.

It's not really the beginning, as conversations have been going on for several years on the HD conversion, but only in the past year or so have the conversations been pushing toward reality.

The big puzzle pieces are that we are using Diversified Systems. for the integration of the room. In addition to the control room going HD, we are getting a new full-video scoreboard from Daktronics.

As things progress, I hope to fill in the gaps on all the decisions made on equipment (which has all but been finalized already...) as well as room integration and such. If there's anything you wish to know, please comment and ask! I hope to have others involved in this process looking in on this blog and offering their comments, as well.

Thanks for stopping by!