Before and After

For those of you who actually marked this day on the calendar, you already know what I'm about to say: (1) Get a life [yes, this day WAS on my calendar so I'm speaking to myself...] and (2) today was the day DSI wrapped up their end of the control room conversion.

It's been a crazy whirlwind of insanity over the past three months (almost to the day). I wanted to quickly recap with a few before and after shots :) If you want to read more about the early days of the conversion, read about it here (and feel free to poke around in the other posts. You can sort loosely by date on the left-hand column; look for late May, early July).

Engineeringland, May 27, 2009

Engineeringland: August 28, 2009

Control Room/Monitor Wall: May 27, 2009

Old Monitor Wall full of single-source CRT TVs, mostly black and white. Notice also the large clunky furniture.

Holding up the back deck is our own Eric Bridenstine, who set a Roast Grill record of 19 chili-dogs! He had an hour, but it only took him 53 minutes. We at CanesVision are certainly proud. Read more at the N&O and here you can see some of the Twitter updates from other customers that were cheering Eric on (and others vowing to avenge his effort). Stay Tuned to CanesVision Online for a video recap in the near future :)

But... that's beside the point...

Control Room/Monitor Wall: August 28, 2009

Of course, we still have to clean and neaten things now that the bulk of the work is done. There are still a few odds and ends to be taken care of (I mentioned cleaning, right), but also a few loose ends that we're working out. Thankfully, the loose ends pertain to hockey. And, why am I happy about that? Because we're ready for football [as far as equipment/install is concerned], and that's less than a week away!

I do hope to get a better/more thorough walkthrough soon, but... you know... there's quite a bit else to do around here :)

Looking Good

Harris is in the house now configuring the router and monitor wall :)

We are also going to start the process of moving our editing machines back into the control room, so we should be settling in throughout the next week or so.

Just keeping you updated as I can :)

Lighting It Up

A few pictures to update you. These were actually taken yesterday, but not much has visibly changed since then :)

I keep referencing the monitor wall because it will really be the focal point of the room on game day. The final monitors were placed, so this is the final configuration of the wall :)

And... the switcher control surface was installed yesterday!

Switcher: under wraps

IT LIGHTS UP!

(Demo Mode)

See?

Wanted to get this out before the weekend.

Also... something AWESOME is coming in just a few minutes... stay tuned!

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"...

Quick Pictures Post

A couple of images from today.

First is the controller for the EVS replay system. This is what the operators can mark, recue & replay the footage. It interfaces with the EVS computer and can have the replays/clips labeled and logged so that we can access them later to make videos and such. This is the same brand of replay system that nearly every sports broadcast truck uses for live production. YAY :-)

And... two more monitors are up on the wall! They will wait to place the last couple of monitors until the top ones get completely wired up. But, it's nice to see them up there!

Man I can't wait ;)

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!

Day 2 - Skeletons

Bryan and Jordan began the surgical removal of equipment today: disassembling, inventorying, and divvying it up to either be saved, shipped, scrapped or stored.

Here are some pictures of the happenings of the day. Thanks to Jordan Keen for the pictures :)

At the start of the day
Monitor Wall - From Entry Door


And, as the day progressed, some notable images...

VTR Racks (note the shelf.... the left rack is already gone, as are the DigiBetas...)

Engineering land from the corner/door.



At the end of the day...
The Monitor Wall - from the Audio Room door

Also, make sure you bookmark the RBC Center Webcam... Besides catching snapshots of the Sesame Street production, you'll be able to see the physical removal of the current Jumbotron and scoreboard paraphernalia and the new Dak videoboards will be installed shortly after! The entire process is to be completed on June 18th, the day before the Keith Urban/Sugarland concert (they obviously don't plan to use it, it just needs to be done and out of the way).

More pictures to come tomorrow, I'm sure.

DSI Design Review - Day 2

Well... all the "cool" stuff was pretty much discussed yesterday :)

One nice thing about today was a simplification of the patch bay. Basically, the panel will follow the signal flow from top to bottom - sources at the top, distribution amps underneath, then on to the inputs to the switcher and router under that.

In addition, the sources across the top will normal all the way down, meaning if Camera 1's source output is Row A, Column 1, then you could find Camera 1's DA and switcher/router inputs all the way down Column 1. Think of it as a larger than life functional excel spreadsheet ;)

We finalized the console finishes today; we'll be going with the cherry wood-like side panels and the "charcoal matrix" countertop finish on TBC IntelliTrac systems.

In addition, we will be using TBC TracWall framing for the Monitor Wall monitors to mount to. The TracWall system will be bolted to a laminated panel that basically flattens out the front wall, since there is a slight curve in the wall that is to hold the monitors.

On a side note, our backup V7000 that feeds the backup ribbon board took a dump on us during the last round. We sent it back to Daktronics, who replaced all the hard drives. The unit works well, but needs the mirror to work overtime to get it rebuilt :) If we keep having problems, the nice thing is that the Dak team should be in town in late June/early July to hang our new scoreboard!

Today was mostly patch bay location (oddly enough), as well as signal flow/connectivity. In addition, we discussed the usage of Blu-Ray as our medium of choice for archiving our air check/proof of performance and even melts. The issue is that stand-alone Blu-Ray recorders are not even yet available in the US.

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.

Window to the World

There are so many things that I want to be able to say about everything that is going on around here... too bad I only have time for short posts!

I wanted to start on the equipment side of our room renovation with the focal point of the room - the monitor wall.

Currently, the CanesVision control room is full of rack-mounted CRT source monitors, ranging from 9" to 24" in size, most black and white, a few (graphics and preview/program) in color. The footprint is staggering...

Technology has come a long way in the near-ten years since this room was built, and the monitor wall is getting a definite upgrade! We will be utilizing a total of five NEC LCD4615 displays for our monitor wall sources. To "break up" the monitors into usable sources, we will be using the Harris Centrio Multiviewer software. We have already downloaded the software to be able to lay out the wall, but haven't had much of a chance to figure it out since the team is still going strong in the post-season (incessant knocking on any surface that closely resembles wood can be heard...)

The nice thing about the multiviewer setup is that it is custom configurable with virtually no limit to the number of layouts you can design. So, there can be a layout for hockey with separate director and td, hockey with a single director/td, basketball configured both ways, football, monster trucks, graduation... you can have a different layout based on the number of inputs and type of event, without having to physically patch anything. Just drag, drop, save and import :)

In addition to the monitor wall, there will be additional multiviewer outputs (all driven from the same Centrio) at the video shading position and the producer's position. Currently, our producer can not see anything but our program feed. Now, the producer will be able to see as many inputs as we can squeeze onto his monitor :)

There are so many other things I want to talk about, but I don't want to bore anyone to death. So, for now, this is good enough...

If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment and we'll try to figure out the answer ;)