Location

Since the last post we do not have a lot of changes with the equipment search. We are still waiting for companies reply. The new system diagram is not ready yet as we do not know enough about equipment that we will get. From the last meeting we know that it will be only one flyaway for the show. As we do not have a lot of time left we started to look for a good location for our flyaway.

Last week we had a meeting where it was announced that the flyaway kit will be serving fashion show on level 4. The best location for it so far is library area, next to the balcony. Cables can be ran through the library doors that   will be unmounted and closed for a public use. One of the lift that is situated opposite the library doors will not serve level 4 so cables are not gonna be on the public way. This is good location to get a bit away from general public but still being visible through the balcony. There two wall boxes outside of the library wall it is a good distance and seems to be enough tie lines. next week we are going to make so more measurements and make a rough plan of location.

27 March 2011

Since last post me and Suhaib made a rough HD flyaway system diagram that we can possibly use to build our flyaway. We pretty much finished the equipment list for the flyaway.
We had another Rave Live meeting  where we learned some more specifications of the event.

The latest news from the last Rave Live Engineering meeting are: The name of the event is Ravensbourne 11 now. It is going to take 3 days in the beginning of the June. Me and Suhaib will work on shooting fashion students show each day. Another new thing is that we need 2 Flyaway kits now, both HD. That doesn’t really make any difference to us because we are going to us the same system diagram and the same equipment for both of them. The latest equipment list we have made with Suhaib is:

1. Vision mixer + Control

2. Matrix/HDSDI router

3. Multi viewer with LCD monitor/ multiple monitor screens

4. Jack field panel

5. Power unit

6. DA(s)

7. SPG

8. CTP panels

9. Camera(s) (triax or location)

10. RCP/OCP (depending how many cameras) (if triax)

11. CCU (depending how many cameras) (if triax)

12. VT deck? HD

13. Waveform monitor – touch monitor for switching

14. HD Grade 1 monitor

15. Audio mixer

16. Audio Monitor

17. PM monitor

18. Down convertors

19. Embedder

20. De-embedder

21. 3 plasma screens

22. UMD

23. Tally system

24. Speakers for studio floor

25. GFX
26. Battery packs for cameras (if location)

HD system diagram:

We are still not sure about what cameras we are going to use on the event. And we still do not know if we are going to get HD SDI Video Matrix. Now we are working on the new better system diagram. The one we have made before is still can be used as a base.  

The Head of engineers Dan said there are few companies that  may give us equipment for Ravensbourne 11 for free. Suhaib have spoken to guys from Trickbox tv and Alias Hire at the exhibition who were interested in providing us with equipment as well.

13 February 2011

So last week we had a Rave Live meeting among level 2 engineers where it was announced about some decisions made. We were talking about new conception of the event. Now it is not broadcasting course event anymore, since this year all courses are going to be involved with this event, an annual show of students work and achievements. And there were some changes made on technical requirements as well. The most important one for me and Suhaib is that all shows that are going to be shot during Rave Live must be recorded in HD. This means that the rack we have been working on is not suitable any more. Now we need to work on new equipment list and a new system diagram. Plus now we need to find where we can get HD equipment.

So now we are going to start chasing more companies to find an HD flyaway kit.

25 January 2011

So the wiring has been started from scratch again.  A lot of cables need to be made.

This is how the rack looks at this moment:

18 January 2011

After the equipment in the rack was tested we decided to start wiring it properly. But this time we decided to do it the way it is supposed to be done in the professional engineer environment. We are not sure if we will use this rack for RaveLive 2011 but anyway this will be a good practice before the event. So before taking any wiring actions we started with a system diagram considering the equipment we have. We added some small bits like patching field for more redundancy, CTP panel for better and easier connectivity and AMU to monitor AES audio. All the cables are numbered and the length off cables considered to make the wiring look good which is important as well i think because an order makes it easier to understand the system and this means you can resolve a problem quicker. 


We have designed a system diagram for our flyaway.  Using all the equipment we already had in the rack  we  added some devices like  Audio Mixer, AES AMU ,  jackfield  and CTP.  This diagram represents video and reference layers only. Below is the system diagram drawn on paper.

After working on it in AutoCad the diagram looks like this:

This system is designed for 4 cameras and 4 extra inputs (like more cameras, MAM playback port output, Colour Bars etc). Jackfield and CTP give system more flexibility and allows quick problem solve in case of equipment failure. And CTP gives all rack’s inputs and outputs in one place. The diagram avoids too much use of DA’s as they are quite likely to fail.  This system allows more equipment to be connected quickly having 5 extra reference feeds on CTP.

 This is how the rack is going to be wired. Of course it is not the final version of the Flyaway Diagram. From the beginning we planned use Video Matrix. We used one for Rave Live 2010. Powered by software with a touch screen it was very comfortable to set up and run. Plus we still don’t know about any requirements and specifications  of the event we will be involved in .

13 November 2010

So we have got the basic equipment list now. Now we need to look for this components first and then we can  think about the rest.

Having a Rave Live session this week me and Suhaib decided to start looking for equipment available in the workshop lab. Among few racks of equipment from the old building and from Rave Live 2010 we found one suitable rack that already contained SPG, SD -SDI Pattern Generator,  SD-SDI Vision Mixer,  SD-SDI WFM, Analog WFM,VTR , digital and analog glue and two SDI multi viewers (2 screens each).

We decided to test all the equipment in this rack as it can be used for the project. All the wiring was removed and we started to wire it from scratch. We started with a reference , SPG ref signal was looped through DA and fed into each piece of  equipment to in order to genlock it. This attempt failed as none of equipment was getting ref signal. Then we took B&B signal coming straight from CAR PGM through wallbox tie lines and looped it through another DA in our rack and fed it into all components and it all was genlocked. As we found out DA card that we used first was faulty and after looping onboard SPG reference signal through another DA in all was fine.

After this the pattern generator, SDI DA’s, vision mixer, SDI WFM and multi viewers were tested. 100% colour bars signal from generator was looped through DA and fed into multi viewer 1 (input A and B), SDI WFM (input A looped through multi viewer) and vision mixer input 1 and 2. Vision mixer PGM and preview signals were fed straight into multi viewer 2 (inputs A and B) and looped through it to go to WFM. We had a problem with multi viewer 1. After having a closer look the problem was found – it was a faulty power supply unit and after replacing it with another unit it all was working well.

Rack.Front

Rack.Back

5 November 2010

We had our first Rave Live meeting this week. We were deciding our Rave Live Project roles. I’ve chosen the role of Head of Flyaway. I have chosen this role because I find it very interesting and challenging and I was involved in Flyaway project helping level 2 students last year and I enjoyed it.

I will work on this project together with Suhaib Ahmad. We know now that Rave Live will be held in the middle of June. Despite the fact that we have 3 terms to get the Flyaway ready we decided to have quick meeting with Suhaib the same day and came out with a short list of the main equipment components that we will need:

1.       Video matrix

2.       SPG

3.       Vision mixer + control panel

4.       Embedder

5.       Digital DA’s

6.       Analog DA’s

7.       VTR( or access to MAM playback port)

8.       Cameras

9.       CCU’s plus RCP/OCP’s (if studio cams will be used)

10.   WFM’s

11.   Audio Monitors

12.   Picture Monitors

It is a rough list. It is not full and we don’t know if it will be SD-SDI or HD-SDI Flyaway (depends on requirement and equipment availability) and we don’t know the quantity as well yet.