February 2012 – JohnMunoz

HD upgrades near completion

Last sunday we pulled all of the analog equipment which really meant all of the equipment out of the media office and made room for the hd equipment. Monday we rented the scissor lift and began pulling the old wiring and installing the new wiring. the old wiring was 25 conductor control cable and Multicore cable. Then we replaced then with RG-6 and CAT5 wiring. Much cheeper and easier to work with. We working on this through most of the evening on Monday night. Tuesday night we strung up wiring behind the stage and began setting up the equipment room to become the wiring hub. Wed I took a floating holiday off from work. The last of the new equipment arrived. We unboxed some of the hardware and sent some stuff off to be manufactured at a local machine shop. Unboxed some more and began setting up the PTZ’s and the master control. We also began programing the PTZ’s for the cameras. We have a combination of Sony and Panasonic cameras so the controllers needed to be customized for each protocol. We then began working on running cabling from the equipment room to the media office to make the final connections. Thursday we closed up the mounted up the ptz’s up and began interconnecting everything to the switcher mainframe. we also ran cabling from the balcony all the way back to the media office for the two rear cameras and two-channel communications. we also wired up the communications to the sound console to deliver communications to a wireless IEM channel for the wireless camera operators. friday we put the finishing touches on everything and began learning the operation of all the new software. We also wired up a makeshift recording system and projection system. That evening we debuted the new cameras with a concert being held at the church. It was a rough start be we got to use the time to figure out all the of the stuff and begin to work out the kinks.

Today we cleaned up our mess and the office and finalized some last cable runs to the sound booth. we also returned the projection equipment to the booth as well as increased the projection resolution from 1024×768 to 1600×1200. Our system could support 1080i however we still need to match up some final settings before pushing our limits. We were also able to bring in the mixed feed back into the projection computer. The software doesn’t seam to support 16×9 however so there may be some aspect ratio weirdness going on until we swap software

Left to Do

-Acquire HD Recorder

http://www.aja.com/products/kipro/ki-pro/ki-pro-description.php

-SDI Scaller

http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=dvs304dvi&subtype=285&s=4

-SDI Streamer

-Pro Presenter with alpha-key

http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=vsc700&subtype=285&s=4

-wide screen confidence monitors

-additional BNC/RG-6 compression connectors

–gaffers tape to hide wiring

in with the new

still trying to get the old out.

Equipment keeps coming in. So far all the clear-com in is, cabling wire connectors and communications equipment. The JVC cameras should be here by the end of the week. I’ve been working on the pre-production but when the cameras get in we can start shooting. Need intro’s, outro’s, promotional clips, some stock footage and not to mention all the CG work that I should be doing now. I’ll need to pick up some SDHC cards for the cameras. One of the cool things about the new cameras is you don’t need expensive tape to capture on. Everything can be stored on SD cards. They have to be slightly higher quality than your point and shoot camera type, but still much cheaper than tape. The sales rep will be delivering most of the equipment himself to save us on shipping charges. he’s expecting to be in town on or about the 22nd. Which means that I’ll be disappearing from the face of the earth shortly after that. I may need some reminders about eating, sleeping, and other basic requirements of life. Once I get myself involved in a project, I want to see it though to the end. I’ve been trying to do as much pre-planning as I can so that the actual install goes smoothly but things always creep up. I’m going to be counting on help from a lot of people to get this done. The contractors have already been by to survey the new studio area. Once we can confirm on a price that construction will begin quickly. We also need to install the cabling conduit and hub. This will require the scissor lift but I’ll also need to use the lift for installing the new cameras as well as pulling all the old cabling out.

Fun times are ahead!

Current Schedule

Sunday Feb 19 – Analog Abatement (final analog Sunday)

Remove all equipment from old media office

Remove analog equipment from balcony

Pull RGBHV from booth to Hub

Wednesday Feb 22 – Final Shipment to arrive

Thursday Feb 23 – Begin installation. Need to rent scissor lift.

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