TV Monitor for upcoming musical

[GridGirl]

We do this every year and have pretty much got it down to a fine art! We've got a small "bullet" camera which is usually mounted on the MD's music stand; it feeds a video splitter and we go from there off to TVs in both wings, above the audience and at the SM desk (I refuse to call a musical without conductor-cam!). We just use bog standard CRT TVs - provided they have an AV input then they work perfectly and there are no latency problems. I second the recommendation to rent as well. If you have long cable runs then a splitter/booster may be something else worth hiring.

[andy_s]

I agree with Gridgirl; a bullet or lipstick camera attached to conducters music stand (or keyboard if s/he is directing from the piano) works very well; because the cameras are so small there's almost no restriction on where and how you can rig it, and they are not that expensive, so might be worth investing in even if you hire the rest of the kit.

At the place I used to work at we would set this up in the best position and feed it via the installed video tielines to various monitors around the place as necessary. Our preferred version for ac tors to see MD was a 21 inch video monitor on the circle front lighting bar - a bit above actors eyeline, but in my view it is better that they look up to see the image than down at monitors at their feet. Performers need to maintain eye contact with their audience at key moments, and looking up preserves this illusion much better than looking down, when the audience might think the performers have closed their eyes! This is why they invented autocues for newsreaders....

 

However, I would agree that it's going to affect the efficacy of the blackout to a seemingly dispropportionate extent.

 

there weren't issues with latency as far as we could tell, they are CRT video monitors and the bullet camera we had sent an analogue video signal via 70ohm BNC tielines, with a distribution amp in the video patchbay. Even though the signal was travelling quite long and circuitous routes around the building, timing didn't seem to be a problem. Yet another reason to sign up to the Luddite Anti Digital Party? :D Who bothers to set their watch by the BBC any more now you get a digital version of the pips that is different to the FM version?

 

 

(also good points about feeding a picture to the promptdesk area and a relay of performers to conductor.)

[mackerr]

One potential pitfall to beware of: the latency in many large, flat screen TVs can be long enough to cause problems with the beat. Definitely check the unit you plan to use before committing to it.

 

This is a common problem in commercial theater, where the band might be anywhere in the building, and not all in the same room. In my experience anything but analog CRT monitors is a problem due to the latency. The 27" CRTs that get mounted in the balcony rail lighting position are getting hard to find as no one makes them anymore. Every digital device in the video chain probably adds at least a frame of delay, each video frame is 33ms in the US (60 fields, 30 frames/sec), is it 20ms (50 frames/sec) in the UK? Maybe with shorter latency due to frame rates it won't be as big an issue, but it is still an issue. A digital camera adds at least a frame, the flat screen adds at least a frame, any digital processing adds at least a frame, it adds up.

 

Consumer cameras are usually fine, many even switch to IR mode during blackouts if the DSM needs a shot of the stage to oversee scene changes.

 

Mac