LCD monitor rigging

[Prodman22]

Hi

 

For our xmas school musical I need to rig a Conductor relay system for the actors so that they can see the conductor who is in an isolated room backstage. I am looking at 2 x 21 inch LCD monitors and I need to be able to rig each of them off a Doughty 750mm Boom arm with standard hook clamp either side of the auditorium.

Is there anything fairly cheap on the market that I can buy or adapt for flying LCD screens for this purpose. They need to be fully adjustable so tilt and pan.

Any advice appreciated.

 

Thanks

[jonathanhill]

Personally I would buy a suitable VESA mount and bolt two half couplers to the back of it and use that to attach the TV to the de-rig.

 

You are unlikely to find something that will give you full pan and tilt of the TV.

[mac.calder]

We use a bracket like this (it is not that exact one, but I cannot find the one we bought which we can lock off by tightening the nuts on the pivot points). Bit of modification to get a clamp attached and away you go.

[timsabre]

This is an aside to your actual question, and you may already have thought of it, but do be aware of image latency (lag) when doing something like this. The best way is to use a basic CCTV camera and run analogue composite video (the old yellow phono plug) to the screens. Anything digital (e.g. camcorder with HDMI out) can have up to 0.5 seconds delay by the time it's gone through the LCD screen processing which is disastrous for music.

[Shez]

These are what I've used before. Only 10KG max load though which may or may not be enough for you.

 

And as Tim says, check your latency - anything digital is a pain for this!

[Prodman22]

I have thought about this quite a bit. Im using a SD panasonic CCTV camera SD5 with BNC out. Im thinking of obtaining two relatively cheap LED TV's 21 inches that have a Yellow RCA connection on the back and will distribute the signal from the camera via a BNC splitter to both the screens and convert BNC to RCA. With this eliminate digital Latency ?

The TV's will hand on doughty boom arms either side of the first balcony pointing towards the stage.

 

 

 

This is an aside to your actual question, and you may already have thought of it, but do be aware of image latency (lag) when doing something like this. The best way is to use a basic CCTV camera and run analogue composite video (the old yellow phono plug) to the screens. Anything digital (e.g. camcorder with HDMI out) can have up to 0.5 seconds delay by the time it's gone through the LCD screen processing which is disastrous for music.

[andy_s]

As I understand it, an led screen will introduce a degree of latency by virtue of its own internal processors. We had a similar set-up to the one you describe recently and the composer and the conductor both complained about the singers being behind the band. This was the reason given by the AV dept: the AD converter in the tv monitor itself.

[timsabre]

Using composite out of the camera is good as that will eliminate latency at that end, but as Andy says there will also be some latency in the LCD screen processing. Some are better than others and the only way to find out is to try it. An old CRT monitor is the only way to completely get rid of delay but that's obviously difficult to rig.

[J Pearce]

Using a SD CCTV camera will help, the composite out on most handicams is often quite delayed, especially if it is having to be scaled as the camera's native resolution is higher.

 

Also, an old SD LCD TV will probably be quicker than an HD screen, as the HD screen has more processing to do. You may do better feeding the screen its native resolution and using a known fast scaler, by Kramer/Extron/etc., that can scale in a few frames.

[Shez]

The last time I did this, we actually used computer monitors and a scaler (as Jon suggested) with an old analogue video camera. Monitors intended for gaming tend to have the lowest latencies.