abbotsmike

If some delay is acceptable, there are CCTV cameras on the market that wouldn't need to switch to IR mode in anything but a total blackout....

Is a LEM T5 definitely a subwoofer? All the images I can find are for a 15" active top.

 

Either way, assuming it's a basic reflex design, you could probably find a pretty good match with a tape measure and some rough specs.

They use digital rather than radio frequencies, and the transmitter and receiver are paired, so no pesky licence issues.

If you are going to keep repeating it, I think we should point out that this statement is not really accurate, the reason they do not need a licence is they use the licence free shared 2.4GHz band, with all the potential pitfalls this has of shared RF frequencies.

 

 

Yeah I keep seeing this comment and forgetting to respond! All wireless frequencies are "radio" frequencies. Whether the devices transmitting and receiving on a given frequency band are analog or digital is largely irrelevant to whether or not they need licensing.

 

Radio mics using the 2.4ghz "wifi" band have their place, however they often don't co-exist in a friendly manner with nearby wifi networks.

DCLX had a sizable pile of Aluminium scaff at one point, might be worth getting in touch. I have a small amount, what size and quantity do you need?

You probably won't find anyone willing to do your homework for you I'm afraid.

 

A bit of research will find the answers you seek, there are lots of stage plots on the internet that people have shared over the years, rig information in youtube videos that people make when on jobs, and pricing on supplier websites. even having a good dig around this forum will leads to lots of info about what is in use and what rigs venues have.

I get the impression the circus industry appear to be very arrogant

I fixed that for you ;) :)

 

From reading through this thread that does seem to be the case. On the one side there are non circus people saying "I don't understand can anyone explain" and on the other side there are circus people saying "you're not circus enough to understand, how dare you question us"

 

Some of the responses have been very enlightening and interesting though, it's just a shame it seemed to take several rounds of arguing before anyone actually revealed any proper information!!

 

The only thing I can contribute is:

 

As a former regular rock climber, the harness suspension timings always amuse me. I used to be regularly dangling around in a harness for periods of an hour or more when helping people less experienced than me, or rescuing groups of students that had freaked themselves out and frozen on a multi pitch route.

 

Recently been have a discussion with a colleague about lifting and moving projectors in the live events realm. Someone has pointed out that they're really heavy and awkward, and maybe the usual method of throwing 4 strong people at the problem isn't the solution. The alternatives are all complex, expensive, and would lead to a web of LOLER and training requirements, that could actually lead to greater risks than the strong people solution. And the fact that are actually very few if any examples of the current method, actually going wrong!

Barco, christie, panasonic, all make good kit. Are you planning to buy or hire?

 

My preference is panasonic, generally used in a corporate environment, But once had a 20k laser one setup in a cinema, and it blew the house projector (a 30k lamped Barco I think) out of the water in colour and brightness.

I have a dymo Rhino, expensive up front, but reliable and easy to use.

 

Genuine cartridges aren't exactly cheap, but I use a mixture of genuine and third party ones, depending on the application!

My church does this also but a bit simpler. We have 4x panasonic aw-he40 remote cameras into a Blackmagic atem-1 mixer. This is streamed to YouTube live using OBS software on a pc.

 

The cameras and mixer are controlled by a single operator (concentrating very hard) from a touchscreen running a vb.net app I wrote. It commands the cameras and mixer over ethernet. You can store preset positions on the cams or live control with a joystick, also do moves between the positions.

Hi Tim. That sounds incredibly similar to something we're setting up for our MG car club here in Melbourne.

We have 1x AW-HE40 cam with a Blackmagic ATEM-MINI mixer also taking HDMI signal from a laptop PC, and streaming to Facebook via OBS software.

I want to dumb this down so people other than myself can run it, so would like to put together a simple app to move the ipcam to one of a couple of set positions, and initialise the ATEM a certain way.

(We have all the manufacturer apps that can do this, but I want to fit all the HOW TO OPERATE instructions onto a single sheet! ;) )

VB is my preferred language too. Is there any chance of seeing your source before I start delving into aw-he40_ip_control_specification_aw-he130_aw-ue70.pdf ? :)

 

Cheers, Ric.

 

I'd look at a stream deck and the companion program

On a separate note, who can be bothered to steal stage weights?! I'd much rather leave them in one place as much as humanly possible!

DCLX make a weight skate, a wheeled trolley for transporting stage weights. I'm sure if you got in touch with them Duncan would happily do a variant with some sort of locking bar.

But lack of easy adjustment on the console is yet another "feature" which yamaha could have dealt with better in design, like the many niggles which could have been improved or resolved by a firmware update.

 

 

It's called the QL

And on top of that, buy decent (meanwell are my goto) brand PSUs. Seen too many cheap ones fail!!

 

I'd second the recommendation for 24V tape. 24V pixel tape does exist if you look hard enough, as does 24V RGBW

When I find I need or wish I had something more than a couple of times in a row, then I buy it.

 

If you're that busy, then this method will fill you up with the perfect kit for your workload pretty fast.

Was in need of a windows based qlab alternative recently, specifically one that can be run from companion & stream deck. I ended up using casparcg, which is both massive overkill and not the right tool for the job. Remembered about multiplay, and just read that it can do OSC now too. Following with renewed interest!

No issue with it in principle, and have done it in a pinch! But you do need to make sure that you use shielded cable, which will reduce the cheap/lightweightness somewhat.

 

Also, as far as I know, they're all basically just an ethercon to 4 sockets/tails, Ie nothing you couldn't probably make yourself, for vastly less money!!

Those look like very sturdy units. I imagine they'd be ideal for use on stage, but I'm not so keen on the idea of one bouncing around in a dog box with the mixer.

 

Velcro it down then?

 

Stop throwing the mixer down stairs?

 

While they are sturdy, I can't see one being able to inflict significant damage to the back of a mixer. Also, by the wording of visiting engineer, is this going into a venue anyway?

So in a system built incorrectly? Sure, if you treat HDMI like you treat VGA you are going to have a bad time... In this day and age you can do enormous digital video-over-ip matrixes with near-zero (visually imperceptible) switch times covering kilometers that would give VGA system architects a panic attack. But you have to design with the technology.

 

Lack of education and treating it the same as analogue audio is why people have issues with digital. Analogue was forgiving*... sure you might loose some pixels here and there, your clocking may skew, the colours might be slightly off, but if close enough was good enough any monkey could patch together a functioning system* that worked most of the time.

 

^{*if you don't care about quality of image and colour accuracy.}

 

Couldn't agree more! I haven't seen a VGA cable in use on an actual job in probably 4-5 years.

 

Use the right kit and design your digital signal chain properly and you'll have no latency issues. Screens are where most latency I see comes in, and most monitors screens that have an appreciable lag have a "game mode" or similar to get rid of most of the processing.

I think you've answered your own question in your title?

Most of the video/streaming techs I know use them or have heard of them. I believe Elgato happily support the bitfocus/companion team, but don't wish or don't need to actively engage in the tech market.

 

They market it at the game streamer area, and there are a couple of plugins to that end, such as OBS.

 

Certainly from my end, for a lot of shows it's both smaller, cheaper and more capable than the manufacturer specific controls, like analog ways shotbox (x keys) and even in some cases a Blackmagic ATEM panel. I've even seen people using them to supplement Barco EC50 consoles

Yep, got one of the XL versions. Very handy for driving graphics packages, doing fancy stuff with ATEMs, all sorts!

Hello all and thanks for the replies, my mics are e band and I'm using them in Spain, there were two left on but only one was effected it's late now but tomorrow I'll check what frequencies they were on. Can you turn the pilot tone on and of on the G4s ?

 

 

Yes you can select whether or not pilot tone is used. To save faffing around, I generally prefer to set the RX how I want it, then use the infared sync feature to carry those settings across to the TX

Hi

 

This may or may not be of any value, but here goes...

 

I suffer the same issue with the G4 systems; after some investigative work involving oscilloscopes and RF analysis (at some cost) it turns out they can be atrociously susceptible to high-powered 2.4Ghz WiFi and 2.6Ghz 4G/LTE emissions; we upgraded from AT3000 series (which never had an issue) to AT3212 which was practically unusable because of drop-out and poor performance; so we swapped for G4s in the hope they'd do better. Sadly not. Even with pilot tone enabled the venue's wifi can easily overwhelm the receivers causing dancing RF meters when the mics are off, to dropout and crap range whilst they are on.

 

The venue in question has Cisco access points that can transmit at a power far in excess of a hand-held microphone (or belt pack) and just love to hop all over the place, so much to the point that a 2.4Ghz wireless mouse and keyboard will pack up when the venue is full of guests, as will just about every 2.4Ghz radio mic that a visiting act has tried to use; I've seen an AKG Tetrad mic go titsup within 6ft of its receiver, and they are supposed to be bombproof. This is further backed up by the fact that when the venue is empty the interference is non-existant.

 

Bottom line is you're probably experiencing Out of Band interference like I am; the solution is to use external bandpass filters tuned to the particular range that your mics work on, although these cost several hundred quid a pop, and the programmable ones even more.

 

If you're not having issues with them on, then my advice would just be to ignore it, although I have to make sure that the desk channels are muted when not in use, for reasons like Paul has explained above.

 

All the best

Timmeh

 

 

 

 

 

Which frequency band G4's?

 

I've seen, on a few occasions, one of our Ch38 G4s in a rack slammed on the RF meters (Usually only one RX in a rack of 4 or more), with nothing else in the way. Verified with an SDR/Scanner that there wasn't anything in that range too!

IATSE Local 190 here, formerly Secretary-Treasurer and currently recording secretary.

The Blue Room forums are not especially welcoming of we folks from the Colonies.

 

 

Just because we don't like american electrical connectors, doesn't mean we don't like the people!

I purchased from them back in March and had a quick response