FEBRUARY 2018
Vol 243
Communicating with Agent-IC I visited the new premises of Māori Television to find out from Gavin Ho about their adoption of a new communication technology provided by Gencom. Ed: is?
Gavin, your position here
Gavin: I’m Technology Manager at Māori Television. Ed: Right, so you’re the perfect person to tell us about Agent-IC which, by the name, sounds a little bit “Secret Squirrel” but in fact, it’s a product that has come from the stables of Clear-Com, a wellknown and respected brand. This new technology gives you more flexibility than the standard Clear-Com beltpack and headset? Gavin: Yes. I guess probably the best place to start is if we take a couple of steps back. We’ve always been a Clear-Com customer from day one and with the build at the new location, it gave us an opportunity to rethink how we wanted to provide comms and talkback in the new facility. A key driver, particularly around the News operation, is to increase agility by providing the crews and the journalists with all of the tools they require to be out in the field and to quickly turnaround the content they want to provide. Agent-IC is just another tool in our
Gavin at Māori Television.
tool-belt that helps to provide that functionality. It’s recognising our News team want to have more of an immediacy, and the easiest way for us to provide them with those tools is to add on to the technologies that they currently have which, for us, are the Apple iPhones. There’s a heavy reliance on their mobile phone from as simple as internet connectivity to now providing them with the ability to have pretty robust comms back to the station.
Ed: So it’s an adjunct to what you already have – you’ve got a Clear-Com system that you use out in the field, within the station itself, but this just expands that? Gavin: Yes. Any staff member who has a smartphone and has the app loaded, can now easily hook into our comms system. They’re instantly able to have IFB, as well as the ability to talk back to the station. Ed: So for the uninitiated, Agent-IC is an app, though that app requires that you have some infrastructure already in place that is ClearCom based. What is that? Gavin: Our Clear-Com matrix has the IVC-32 card installed that allows IP connectivity back into the wider talkback infrastructure. We then also make that communication path externally available via the public internet; there’s also a licensing server, so we have a finite number of licences within a shared pool which allows us to easily manage the access of the Agent-IC so we don’t have to license up every single OB crewmember – they can all dip into that shared pool of licences. Ed: In the past, before Agent-IC, you would have to have a Clear-Com beltpack, headset, and you would have to be connected how? Gavin: We used to use more traditional TELT boxes that had a mobile phone with an earpiece to hook into our comms system – that’s typically how we would deal with communications out in the field. Ed: But then you would have to make a phone call every time you wanted to communicate. You couldn’t just leave the phone active all the time? Gavin: Exactly – and you know, it was a reasonably expensive piece of gear, we had to continue to maintain. With Agent-IC all of our journalists, camerapeople and sound operators have mobile phones and just by simply installing the app on their device, it instantly gives them the same connectivity. The beauty of it is that it is like having a virtual talkback panel on your phone. Ed: So a producer can have a cellphone, he’s got the list of who’s out there, who’s available, and can punch in and talk and listen to conversations that are going on amongst a number of people … or is it just a “one to one”?
Gavin: It can be one to one, it can be a one to many, it could be a party line so “listen only” – there’s quite a bit of flexibility in how we can manage the communications out in the field. Ed: And the quality of the communication – perfectly acceptable? Gavin:
Yes, perfectly.
Ed: I guess it totally depends on the phone that you use – you wouldn’t only have to use an iPhone would you? Gavin: No, it runs on android as well. It does need a mobile data connection, so 3G or better, but coverage is pretty good these days so it hasn’t been a problem for us. Ed: But I have seen, from the specifications, that it is Wi-Fi capable, so in a small area – just like in an outside shoot where you might have some sort of distance between you, you could use it in its Wi-Fi form? Gavin: Yes, as long as you have connectivity to the internet, whether it’s mobile data or via Wi-Fi you can hook into the system. Ed: At this new facility here in East Tamaki, I see there are quite a number of buildings, so do you actually use it within this area as well? Gavin: No, we have other more suited technology for that like Clear-Com’s “FreeSpeak II” RF system, and we utilise the structured CAT6 cabling to directly connect hardware panels to the Clear-Com Eclipse mainframe. On bigger OBs, we also use the V-Series Clear-Com panels which do a similar thing to Agent-IC in that it uses the internet to transport comms, but you actually get a physical hardware panel that operators are used to operating. That’s been proven quite successful for us as well.
Go to https://sites.google.com/site/nzvideonews/ for more news. P 6 Let’s Play Live DISPLAY & CLASSIFIED ADVERT BOOKINGS BY WED 14 MAR ADVERT COPY BY NOON FRI 16 MAR UP ON THE WEB BY FRI 23 MAR
P12 LED problem revisited P18 Catching the Dogs Page 2
Ed: So Agent IC isn’t eliminating that higher level. In what way does that higher level of ClearCom product work better for you? Gavin: Well the hardware panel is a big thing for us, particularly in a studio environment or a production environment where you would usually want to listen or talk to multiple sources and destinations, and just having a button that you can press to instantly engage with someone is still the preferred method. But obviously, having hardware panels out in the field has limited practicality. Ed: I guess also where you don’t have good cellphone data coverage or no cellphone data coverage, you still need some radio frequency device? Gavin: Well, what we do at that point is we then fall back to cellular based communication. Clear-Com’s “FreeSpeak II” is used here at MTS for RF wireless comms, but we don’t use that out in the field. Ed: What about the hands free capability – can you plug a headset into your iPhone and have it sitting in your pocket?
Gavin: Yes, that’s the other advantage. You can “latch listen” – you can just connect to whatever partyline you want to connect to and latch the listen and effectively just keep it in your pocket and listen to “Director’s comms” and obviously the smaller compact form factor also helps from a portability point of view.
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Ed: And does the director know who’s listening to the conversation at any time? Gavin: There is an icon on their panel to indicate that they are being listened to. Ed: But somebody else couldn’t come along and connect their Agent-IC device to your system? Gavin: No, no … it is secure, the communication is encrypted. Ed: And if you happen to get a phone call on your mobile while you’re in this process does it come through? Gavin: That’s a good question actually. It does come through, you can simply decline the call or “forward all calls”. Ed:
Some of the Māori Television buildings in Auckland.
How have the crews in the field found it?
Ed:
Gavin: They’re loving it from a flexibility point of view, with not having to constantly feed and water that old comms box; you know they always have their phone on them – as long as they keep it charged.
Oooh I sense discipline there?
Gavin: after much laughter … yes it’s a bit of a learning curve for them, but I think they quickly understand all of the benefits and flexibility Agent-IC gives them. NZVN
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Let’s Play Live We’re tower about officer
in Sky City in a special room surrounding the devoted to computer gaming and to tell us all it we have Duane Mutu, the chief operating and one of the founders of Let’s Play Live.
Duane: Let’s Play Live is our gaming, as in computer gaming, company. We’ve been around for about 2½ years and we’ve been working on the production of eSport events and broadcast content and now we’ve built a world class eSports facility that’s around level 7 of the Sky Tower itself in Auckland Central. Ed:
Have you done a deal with Sky City to do this?
Duane: Yes. Sky City announced in November last year that they have taken a 40% stake in the business and that’s been very good for us from a business perspective. I mean, eSports is the biggest entertainment industry on the planet and we were one of the global leaders in what we were doing, and the biggest in New Zealand, so we actually had a few people that came to us as a business wishing to get involved. Obviously for us, the partnership with Sky City was perfect strategically; they have F&B facilities, accommodation, an iconic location, 24 hour security and they understand entertainment. As well, their external partnerships include some of our partners – the Warriors, the Breakers, the Mystics – so it was a really good alignment for us.
Ed: But you’re not going to have many gamers here at a time are you; you’ve got 3 studios for the gamers and 5 gamers in each studio, but the real connection is through the internet? Duane: That’s right. We’re actually a broadcast studio, so primarily we’re about creating top end eSports content. This is to cater for the very best gamers from New Zealand and internationally and they expect a standard. The best way to explain it is that I say to people “this should be looked at as what Eden Park is to rugby, this is for eSports”. Not everyone gets to play on Eden Park – only the very best players get to run out on Eden Park, and that’s what this facility is catered for. But to your point about eyeballs looking at our property, yes, we stream out across the internet to tens of thousands of people and then also across linear TV too. We have partnership deals with the linear channels and we’ve done a bunch of broadcasts already with Sky TV that talks to more than some of your casual traditional sports fans.
Ed: Was it your choice of venue or did they say we’ve got level 7, you can have that? Duane: Well, we walked around for a couple of months to try and find a suitable facility for us and one of the things that was really hard, not just for Sky City but for us as a business, was actually trying to find the correct place. Because this is a “one of a kind” facility, we’ve had to build it from scratch, there aren’t too many like this around the world, most have come from studios that were converted to cater for eSports whereas from start to finish, we were wanting to build a particular facility. We were looking at all these different spaces, they were good for maybe presenting, not so good for gamers, or good for gamers, not so good for presenting and so on. All in all, when we found this location, it was perfect to cater for gamers and presenting and making content as well as being visible from the street and in an iconic location. Ed: And certainly the form factor is high on the cool scale? Duane: It’s very cool. Most people come and say it looks kind of UFO-ish as you go around the whole facility, and you can see that when you look from inside and outside, so very gaming.
Duane at the control desk.
Ed: But also the world, because I’m sure you’re able to link the players here with players overseas and have international tournaments? Duane: That’s what’s really exciting about eSports; there are no barriers as to who can watch the content, so we primarily use a platform called Twitch.tv which is the global standard of gaming broadcast. We put that out and it’s basically open to anyone in the world free on the internet … I guess like Facebook on steroids, where you can go there and communicate in real time what you’re actually seeing. We have been out broadcasting that platform for a number of years which is sort of what has driven our success as well, and if you look at the numbers when we go on Twitch, we have a huge international following from our stuff now. We’ve already attracted some of the biggest eSport stars to New Zealand, in the most recent case, a player called Saint who is the best player at Tekken in the entire world. Ed: And to support that high standard, you’ve got to have the right gear. Did you choose the tech
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equipment that you put in here yourself or have you brought in some expertise in this area? Duane: To be honest, I’m not that techie, there are a lot of great tech minds within Let’s Play Live, but also externally. We used DVT as a preferred partner of ours; they’re very much on the pulse of what technology is out there, and then we looked at what our core drivers were for the business. Then we got
together and started to iron out exactly what we wanted but, like you said, it was really hard because there is no facility to have a blueprint like this in the world, so what we’ve done for the entire facility is that we custom built all the walls, all the wiring to cater for our own requirements. Ed: But at the same time, by having DVT and PLS for lighting to say “that might be okay for you, but this is not going to work on television?”
Stuart with some of the PTZ cameras. Page 7
Duane: That’s right. We were taking both on board; we were moving all the time. It was like Pandora’s Box, you open up one thing and then there’s a problem on the other side often because we are trying to cater for two completely different markets. You’ve got traditional broadcast TV and you’re catering for the internet. And then on top of that, we’re trying to cater for the future in what we are building here. Our entire facility is actually built on the new NDI technology, which basically means that all our cameras are IP based; it means we can cut back on the number of camera operators we have. In actual fact, we have barely any camera operators because all of our equipment is robotic 4K cameras, which means we can pick up the feed not only from our facility, but we can actually move throughout the globe to be able to pick up those camera feeds which changes a lot of things for us.
Ed: You could even go to Te Awamutu and do a piece there? Duane: Absolutely and that’s what the idea was, we’ve actually got tournaments starting around the country. Last weekend we were in Hamilton, this weekend we’re in Christchurch and Wellington and we can pick up the feeds by taking our PTZ robotics, plug it into IP delivery down there across the internet, beam it back to our studio here in Auckland Central, and we can cut those pictures in real time, into a live broadcast whether it be for internet or for TV. Ed: That must be a challenge because, not only have you got quite limited space, there’s not a lot of depth between the camera and the gamer. You’ve also got a lot of black, you’ve got monitors that are changing colour rapidly as the game progresses, and you’ve got gamers who could wear, as you say, any sort of clothing they like … lighting must have been a big consideration? Duane: Lighting was a huge consideration. The first thing, when you think about gaming, it’s always very colourful and bright and there’s this LED neon effect to it, so we were really mindful that, when you walk in the facility, you want to have that experience. So we have completely changeable LED lights throughout the entire facility. Ed:
It’s very disco then?
Duane: Very disco – I think someone referred to it as a “family bar” the other day but, yes, very disco, LEDs everywhere. That look is not only good because it
sets the mood and what you’re going to expect, but also from a broadcast perspective, it very much helps us to cut those pictures that are kind of moody, that can set the scene of different players, different teen kind of genres that they come from, and we use the lighting in that effect. So that’s more of what we’d call kind of “foodie” or “stage” lighting that’s been in there; but as you pointed out, we need proper broadcast lighting to be able to broadcast accordingly to a high definition broadcast standard across your normal TV channels. Ed:
You’ve got to have skin tones?
Duane: You have to have skin tones. We’ve got green screens in here, we’ve got different rooms catering for different people so, again, we’ve got broadcast lighting in almost every room to be able to cater for that, and I think the end result is perfect for what we’re going to need. Ed: You must have looked at facilities overseas that other companies have set up, and you’ve done some yourself, but I guess in larger, more flexible spaces? Duane: There is a standard which, if you’re talking generally about broadcast, as far as your presenters and your commentary room, there are standards around, whether it be traditional sport or eSports, there’s a lot of learning from those types of broadcast, and they’re closer to what you’d expect from a normal sports broadcaster you get anywhere around the globe. So we need to cater for that, such as two people talking or you’ve got a presenter’s desk that needs a particular
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type of lighting. We’ve been able to cater for that, there are examples of that; and then if you look at the gaming rooms specifically, there is a way which I guess is the market standard to see those pictures, which is usually seeing the player sitting playing the video game with a point of view camera pointing down at the player, so you can see their face, their reaction in real time. So we were able to look at those different companies that have made those sorts of broadcasts, including ourselves, and pick a shot or shots that we can make from our rooms that is credible to the audience, but also is at a good quality. Ed: But you want to be a bit edgy too don’t you … you don’t want to do it like the other guys, you want to add something spectacular? Duane: The whole way through this, that’s right. The great thing about this, although it was hard sometimes, it far outweighs the fact you get the flexibility, but for us we were trying to do it the LPL way or the Let’s Play Live way. We have been leading the way, not only in New Zealand, but across the globe with some of our broadcasts, so you’re right, we wanted to make sure that we’re making it a bit edgier, everyone knows there’s something different coming and that’s to my point before about making sure that we represent the core fraternity well, they understand what they’re getting, but we’re still adding on the extra layers that make it that much nicer, that much crisper, the shots are just that much better. The whole way through the project, it was about making sure that we did it our
way, but still being credible to those who are eSports enthusiasts. Ed: So how many hours in the day will this facility operate? Duane: At the moment, it can be a 24 hour 7 day a week operation. One of the reasons we built it that way is because of the time zones. We talked about the internet, so if you’re looking from a broadcast perspective, you need the prep time, so of course we’re going to need to be here throughout the entire day all the time, and then we broadcast out in the New Zealand slot for New Zealand and Australian audiences which is around about between 6 and say 10-11 o’clock. But then as we expand into the globe, we’re actually picking up and broadcasting into other countries prime time. You take somewhere like India, that’s actually a midnight to 4am opening to be able to deliver a broadcast. So for the next couple of months, we are primarily focused on the Australian and New Zealand audiences, but as we move through to the middle part of the year, we’re starting to open up the different markets, particularly the Asian markets, where we can cater to their time zone accordingly, which means this facility, I would say by the end of the year, will be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ed: So you’re providing these feeds out, are you going to take feeds in so your New Zealand and Australian audiences will see gamers in India or China or other places gaming as well? Duane:
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Well it’s already available …
Ed:
But not through Let’s Play Live?
Duane: Not through Let’s Play Live, no. We are a tournament and event creator, and we create our own tournaments from start to finish, so we’re putting on the equivalent to say, the NRL Nines. There are a couple of other tournament providers around the globe who have the capability to also make eSport content and that’s available primarily on the internet, so we don’t need to offer that to our consumers. What local consumers actually want is live and local and that is reflected by the numbers we’ve seen from our partners such as TVNZ picking up international content like the eLeague and then comparing that data to what we’ve been doing with local players. Live and local wins every time. Ed: I can see that’s an opportunity then for the broadcasters such as Sky Television or TVNZ or Mediaworks to take on Let’s Play Live as part of a broadcast channel for eGaming? Duane: Absolutely. That’s exactly what it is, and one of the beautiful things with our technology is that we’re able to deliver by the Kordia network straight to linear broadcast. We don’t need OSB trucks anymore,
that’s one of the big things for us; we can deliver straight to that linear satellite market and they can deliver it straight out and then we’ve got the internet which we talked about earlier, for us to be able to go directly to anyone in the world at any time zone that they may wish to watch it in. Ed: Because you’re on that big fibre cable right here aren’t you? Duane: Absolutely – big dark fibre that makes things go fast. Now we talk with Chris McKenzie about lighting the Let’s Play Live venue. Ed: Chris, did you look upon this as an afternoon job or is it a bit more complicated than that? Chris: It’s a bit more complicated than that because it has been a build project. We essentially started out with an empty space which has been built into 6 rooms, 3 game player rooms, 2 studios and a control room. We had to be involved from the outset to make sure that we got in all of our cabling and the fixed assets that are needed before we come in and do the fit out. It’s been a little bit of a movable feast because there were a number of ideas about what was going to go on, so we have had to be fairly flexible on how we approached an effective solution. Some things have stayed, some things have gone and a few things have been added to what we originally looked at. We’ve also been involved with Brett Schwieters, a production designer by trade who I suggested get involved at the outset, because I’ve done jobs like this with him for television and film. He understands the logistics of building desks and fitting out rooms.
Chris in one of the gaming rooms. Page 11
We work well together and when you look at this gaming room for example, there are LEDs built into the desks, and I worked with him on the design, and then more on page 14
From NZVN April 2012 ... WARNING Will Robinson! Things may have changed as LED lights have generally improved, but the wisdom remains, always do a test with any new piece of gear.
Cheap LED light panels and CMOS sensor cameras don’t mix. Have you had rolling bands of light and dark in your footage recently? I have. I recently recorded a show in a dark studio using a small, battery powered, no-brand, LED light panel that I got in a barter deal. I was using it as a soft light just on the presenter. It was dimmed to a level that the presenter was comfortable with but that still showed him clearly. His light level was competing with a slide projector at times so a balance was needed. The image in my CMOS sensored television camera’s view screen was lighter than the background room light, indicating that quite a bit of gain was being added in the “auto” mode. There was no It’s not so clear in a still photo, so I put white rectangles picture disturbance visible on the left of the picture, to show where the light bands are. so I recorded continuously for an hour moving between full wide and just the This can be accomplished by putting in a dead battery with the presenter head to tail. I monitored the picture in the others in order to lower the voltage. Banding is a serious issue camera’s screen the whole time. and cannot be fixed ( or is almost impossible to fix ) in post. When I later looked at the footage captured off the HDV tape onto my Adobe CS4 timeline, there were rolling bands of light and dark on the area illuminated by the LED panel. On searching the internet, I found these explanations.
That banding effect is caused by the way the driver controls the brightness ( dimming ) of the LED(s) in the lamp. LEDs are fed a constant current through them as not to go overboard on the maximum allowed current. The dimming on the problem LEDs ( the ones that have the banding issues ) is being controlled by the driver that is the PWM type or Pulse Width Modulation. The PWM driver really is the problem as it "pulses the LED's on-off cycle duration to achieve the dimming effect.” The longer the on cycle, the brighter the LED(s) get. Problem is that most, if not all, LED lamp makers, do not specify the type ( PWM or non-PWM ) of the controller driver used in their design. The issue of banding really is not apparent on 30 fps ( frames per second ) shutter speed capture, but at specific higher speeds, notably 60 and higher. LED lamp makers did not take that into consideration but I am sure that they are all aware of that and most likely will change the configuration to fix the problem on their next production run. I have seen many complaints about that with cheap and sometimes expensive LED units. The driver necessary is the constant DC current type that varies the current flow and not the cycling of it. I have also seen the flickering effect when the battery voltage level is at a specific low point ( minimum threshold ) of the lamp.
And another one LEDs don't have to be dimmed in order to exhibit the banding issue. Some have it on the midway setting and others on the high and anywhere in between. It depends on the driver circuitry design which varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and at the specific shutter speed ( fps ) of the camera settings. The el-cheapo LED units that have dimmers on them are the ones to watch out for. I am not saying that they all have that problem but it seems that even the more expensive ones ( and I am not going to name any brand ) have the bug. I know that Comer is a very good and popular one, powerful and versatile, and I have never seen or heard of any issues with that one. I don't think you can get far with any manufacturer circuitry schematics/specs/type as that is not relevant information necessary to the end user and also very confidential info. Electronic jargon is a language in itself. At this time we can only go by other users’ experiences with various LED units out there. I would make sure that the store/ source of my purchase has a return policy or exchange after I try the lamp at various settings with different camera shutter speeds to verify. It’s also worth mentioning that not all PWM designs will have banding. Some have a dual circuitry ( hybrid ) that is designed just for that. Please don't ask me where to get them or which lights have them. I don't know. I just read up on them in the past during my research era; they were not mentioned in use for video applications. Read
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reviews, check out YouTube for strobing/banding/horizontal lines etc. As to a non-LED light to recommend ... there are plenty out there – Lowell, Bescor, Frezzi, Anton Bauer to name a few. Why would you want to go to the non-LED route? Comer is the one I recommend; Taky in L.A Color has excellent service and will answer all your questions. And on the local scene, Paul Richards from Nutshell I now actively avoid LED lighting, especially cheap stuff. We nearly lost a shoot in Hamilton for Rock Quest due to the Venue providing the lighting for the gig, which ... like you say, did not show as a problem at the time. It was a major issue for the production and much head scratching afterward. Research has now revealed that CCD and CMOS sensors react differently to LED. Shooting a test is vital and employing Hyper-gamma or a shutter or both seems to be the best solution.
regard to the fluoro issues mentioned by Clive, these will generally show up with magnetic ballast driven fluoros in installations, or in cheapo fittings. Professional fluoro units ( Kinoflo, Lowel, etc ) all use high frequency ballasts which drive the lamps at a rate well above general camera scan and shutter rates. The banding and flicker issues that you see are the same as have always occurred with any light source driven by an AC waveform. Battery or mains shouldn't matter. If they are driven off mains they will generally use a DC power supply to run the unit. As all the notes state, the strobing issue is about the frequency of the PWM dimming that most cheap units use to control intensity. With regard to the LED units, all of the information you have provided is accurate. Paul's problem is one that is going to build up for everyone shooting in lit environments which are not under their direct control. There is a vast drive to use LED colour changing fixtures to light everything and most of these are the cheapest units available.
And from Clive Cannon, Technical Product Specialist, Sony ANZ Firstly this is a completely different issue to the one that I am aware of with LED lights – especially blue, and that relates to CCD not CMOS. The issue described appears to be much the same as the issue one would expect to get with fluorescent lights, but more severe.
There are a large number of very good and pricey LED colour changers on the market, but not a lot of them end up in places we are going to shoot.
CMOS sensors acquire differently to CCD sensors; in simplistic terms CCD sensors take a snap of the entire field/frame whereas CMOS sensors scan from top to bottom of the frame. Therefore with CMOS, if the image/lighting changes during the period of time that the sensor is scanning, then it will be replicated on the recorded picture.
The key point I feel is to use a reputable lighting supplier; Trade Me is not one!!
If you need to shoot in a suspect environment, as Paul says, shoot a test. It may result in you having to tell your client that the lighting is not up to spec and you can't shoot their event. Perhaps shooters and production companies need to put a caveat about shooting in pre-lit settings on quotes and proposals.
Any supplier worth their salt will be aware of the PWM strobing issues. Buy fixtures with brands that you recognise on them.
In the case of an LED light switching on/off/on/off fast ( i.e PWM ), then of course this is going to be captured by the sensor and seen as horizontal banding. Fluorescent lamps do a similar thing but with much less severe results due to the hysteresis of the phosphor emitting the light, however the picture may still be seen to have mild horizontal bars running through dependent upon shutter speed etc. Shutter should always be OFF when shooting under fluorescent lights. Many professional camcorders with CMOS sensors have a flicker reduce feature for use with fluorescents. and Chris McKenzie, Professional Lighting Services, NZ Firstly I agree with Clive. The key point with all of these fixtures is the level of "professional" quality we are expecting from "prosumer" level product in the marketplace. New Zealand users are all very price driven and are motivated to shop around for the "best" deal. Sometimes that best deal is not. With
So, what should you do? If you already have an LED or Fluoro panel and you are using CMOS or CCD cameras, you need to do tests at different dimmed levels. If you are planning to buy a new light or two, be well aware of the issues. Ed. NZVN
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had my guys execute the installation of that. The lighting is fully controllable … each desk is its own address; we can dial up any colour into each desk that we want by remote. One of the early ideas ( whether it actually comes to fruition or not I don’t know ) is that they will take these desks out when they’re going to go into the theatre or go out on to Armageddon or whatever else, so they need to be a package that they can take out, plug in and programme into whatever they’re doing out there. Ed: There seems to be two areas of lighting from my observation – one is the sort of disco look, the changing lights and the colours; secondly, there’s the lighting for television. There must be two different disciplines here but they’ve got to work together? Chris: Absolutely and that’s why we’re involved because we can cross those disciplines. We can do the disco fruity flash and trash, whatever you want to call it, and we can do the straight stuff – make the faces look good, make the green screen work, make the television broadcast element because, at the end of the day, this is a broadcast job. It’s going out on Sky, it’s going out on Maori TV, it’s going out on the internet. It’s got to be a high quality medium, everything’s 4K so we’ve got to make it look 100% for that. Ed:
So what did you choose for your key lighting?
Chris: In the broadcast sense, because we were restricted in the height, I went with the BB&S pipeline units because they’re a very low profile unit and, because they’re a long source, they give a good soft wrap. So where we’re having either one face or five faces potentially in the same area, they can all be covered. Ideally, you’d like to light each position individually, but this is not that sort of gig; it’s about having to throw as much light in there as you can, with a nice soft quality and wherever the people end up standing, they’re lit and they look okay. Ed:
But also not to distract the gamers?
Chris: Yes and that’s been part of the issue about putting lights on the monitors. I wanted to be able to light their faces but a decision was made that they’d go with what light’s coming off the monitor, and because we’re in quite a brightly lit environment here in the Sky Tower – it’s essentially all glass although we’ve got neutral density blinds – even on a bright sunny day, there’s still a lot of light coming through those windows. So when they’re playing in the morning, which is also why I’ve gone daylight colour balance on everything, we’re working with whatever else might leak into the room. And then obviously, monitors are going to be around the 6500K, so daylight is the colour du jour. Ed: So you’re able to balance if it is a bright sunny day? Chris: Yes, we can certainly pick up enough light to light the presenters, the interviewers and you’ve seen in the entrance area that we’ve got a mixture of the disco lighting and conventional studio type lighting, so we can either run that as a straight interview scenario – you know when they’ve played, when they’ve won, or when they’re doing a meet and greet – or they can flash and trash, which is also what we’ve got with the units running around the corridor in the centre to give the thing a bit of dynamism and make it look like a cool place to be. Ed: But just thinking of the health of the gamers, they’re in this mix of lighting for quite a reasonable
Note the pipelines in the ceiling and hiding on the floor.
amount of time, is this a reason why, for example, you wouldn’t just choose strip LEDs that you could buy from a hardware store? Chris: You can do that, but generally the stuff that you’d buy like that is not good colour rendering and, at the end of the day, we need to deliver the best colour rendering of flesh tones and faces, and also because there’s so many logos, there are so many pieces of artwork – the guys are wearing hoodies, clothing, caps, whatever, which have very discreet colouring or a particular logo, then we’ve got to reproduce that properly and something that you’ll buy at Bunnings won’t necessarily have enough colours in it to actually make those logos reproduce. This is a commercial venture and we have to sell those logos to the punters at home and if it’s a logo they don’t recognise, then we’ve lost the battle of selling them that logo. The BB&S product, because of the high colour rendering and also the high output – everyone looks at it and goes “oh yes, it just looks like a fluro tube” but in fact, it’s twice as bright as an equivalent size fluro tube because of the remote phosphor nature of them. They’re very high output and they’re very compact. They’re a simple unit to use and it makes my job easy putting those units in because of the quality of the light that’s coming out of them and the controllability. I’ve got full DMX control; we have a whole DMX network through all of these rooms where we have remote control over every fitting. Basically, that goes back into a recorder device and then the TD
Page 14
who’s running the show eventually is going to have an iPad sitting on the bench where he can call up lighting states, he can modify a few things that have been necessary, but he can’t go too far, because he’s got enough other things on his plate without having to do fine tweaks on lighting. So we’ve given him the broad strokes to deal with and what he can deal with on an iPad, which talks to our system and then talks out to all lighting in the building. Ed: And you don’t get the hum that you get from fluro ballasts? Chris: No, although LEDs do have their own constraints in the fact that they are a high frequency device, so we have to be a wee bit careful and audio people also have to be a wee bit careful, particularly in these tight environments where lots of stuff is wedged into small spaces. Ed: Proximity is important isn’t it?
Chris: Only the BB&S units. It’s fairly straightforward in there – we do have some built into the desk which is colour changing. That’s still open for a bit of discussion as to how much of that we’re going to run because shots are changing, whether we see much of the desk in the wide shot remains to be seen. At the end of the day, we’re looking for the presenters’ faces. They’re going to have monitors behind them but they may well actually be monitors keyed into the green screen. So there’s a lot of work to be done on the production.
Chris: It is. Ed: Even though you might have a shielded cable, if it’s lying on top of an RF device? Chris: That’s right. We’ve put a lot of radio aerials around, and the audio guys have put a lot of radio aerials around and between the two they can cross talk. But with good practice you can work in most phases. Ed: Any special presenter area?
lighting
in
the
It’s a very disco look. Page 15
Ed: Because it’s so new, it’s a case of “well, let’s sort of see what it looks like in tests” but once it’s bedded in and you’ve actually got players in here, you’ll still be able to pick up on things and say “well, we need to move that or we need to change that in some way”? Chris: Yes that’s true, and I think when you see on air what the end result is, we will know what we need to do to make it look better. In the days of terrestrial television, my measure used to be “what’s it going to look like off the 15th repeater out from Te Araroa on the East Coast”? I want to put out the best possible picture that I’m starting with, so when those poor guys are trying to watch the News, they’ve got something discernible at the other end. I mean okay, our transmission systems are way, way better but there’s still some degradation that goes on, so we have to pump out the best possible picture from here. Ed: And at least you know you’re not going to cook the gamers with the heat from all those LEDs? Chris: No, this is not a job that would have been easy to do with incandescent lighting. Ed:
Or arc?
Chris: Or arcs, yes. I think I might have had a cherry picker with an HMI outside the window but I don’t think Sky City would be too keen on having that around. It’s an interesting job and, as always, it’s a challenge and it’s a nice mixture of a permanent installation and something that will have a life to it, because so much of what we do is very transient. It’s nice to do something that you know will be around for a while and have some life. Ed: do?
Are there lessons for other setups that you might
Chris: About the installation life as much as anything; about considering the fittings we’ve used having the longevity. The projected life of this is somewhere in the vicinity of five or more years and even when you do a fixed install in a studio – okay you might get 5-10 years out of it, but you’ve always got the opportunity to tweak and change; whereas this, once it’s there and locked down it’s going to stay here. Ed: You’re confident that the BB&S product is the right one for this job? Chris: Absolutely yes. I’ve done one other job with their pipeline fixtures and when this popped up I thought yeah, this is another good job for BB&S. Their quality is great, their supply is great and they’re very flexible. I’ve had to change and mix and match some of the fittings in this job already and it’s a very simple process to do. Ed: Tell me, are all the pipes straight, or can you curve them? Chris: No, they are all straight … maybe if you got angry enough you could … Ed:
Or just heat them in the right place?
Chris: Yeah yeah, I’m sure you know people in the glass bending industry Grant who can do that! Ed: Maybe I’ll suggest it at this coming NAB … a nice tight spiral perhaps? Chris: … Ed:
Go and talk to Mr Plesner and suggest that
Chris would like some curves?
Note the camera on the monitor and the curved lights built into the transportable desk.
Chris: Some flexible ones … well it has been one of the challenges in this building that, when you look around, there’s not a straight surface in the place. It’s a curve, we’re in the Sky Tower, we’re working between the central core which is a tight circle and the outer wall which is a slightly lesser circle. Ed:
But the lights under the desk are curved?
Chris: That’s not a pipeline – that’s a standard colour changing LED strip. That’s a good high colour rendering LED strip. Ed:
It’s not a hardware store one?
Chris: We haven’t gone to the hardware store for those strips and for the drivers that we’ve gone with – high frequency drivers so that we don’t get any issues with strobing and beating with scan rates on cameras and all of those issues. I had a talk early on with Stu about what cameras were going in here, to make sure that we were in the right ballpark for the frequency modulation, because how you dim LEDs is essentially by strobing them at very high rates. So if you get that wrong you end up with black bars or interference. Ed:
A rolling shutter on your CMOS camera?
Chris: Exactly and there are a few people in the very early days who got caught badly by that. There’s still a bit of technology out there that can bite you on the “you know what”. So beware. ( If you have disturbed pictures with an LED panel, go to pp 12 and 13 or see “LED Warning April 2012” under Articles online at NZVN.) NZVN
Page 16
Catching the Dogs As a follow-up to our interview with the NZRB team at their Auckland studios, I visited the greyhound track in Auckland’s Manukau on race day. We’re inside the van, we’ve just seen the camera inputs – three red triax cables – and inside we have Matt Blackmore who you saw teleconferencing with us in December. Ed:
What happens in here Matt?
Matt: We’ve got three triax to fibre converters. Because we’ve gone for the HDC-2000 series, their CCUs are only fibre interfaced, so we have a box from Sony that takes the SMPTE fibre from the three CCUs and converts it to a digital triax for us. That allows us to use our triax equipment that already exists at the seven venues this van covers. Investing totally in SMPTE fibre was something that we didn’t have the budget for. Ed: Well it would be a case of having to do it across the whole network wouldn’t it? Matt: Absolutely, yes. So, from there, camera CCUs and then we’ve got a 32 x 32 HD-SDI video router which forms the core of the switching within the van. Hanging off the router, we have two Lawo V_remote4’s which do all the J2K encoding for us. Ed: Now we’ve seen the Lawo encoders in the studio in Stanley Street which are taking the stream that these ones make and converting them into something you can use? Matt: Yes. Hanging off the Vocus network are Lawo V_remotes. On the network are multicast J2K streams that can be generated from this van, from any other van, or any box on the network. Any other box on the network can pick off one of those streams and spit it out as SDI out of the V_remotes. So it’s sort of like the V_remotes are the edge devices to the network. They provide the streaming for us; also the audio routers are built in. With the V_remotes coupled with VSM control, which is being hosted on servers sitting in Christchurch, we have full switching / routing control over the J2K video network streams, video and audio routers within the V_remotes and the standalone 32 x 32 video router in the van. Ed: But all of that’s done before it goes through the Lawos? Matt: Kind of. Basically, there’s an audio router built into each V_remote and the audio IO we have from the V_remote is just MADI over fibre, and we’ve got a breakout box here which gives us analogue, AES and whatnot.
Matt at the action end of the OB van.
Matt: Fortunately, stream four’s not used a lot. It’s basically a sub-switch so if we had a point of view commentary camera or a photo finish for example, we can sub-switch that in. Ed: But I’ve seen around the track that there seem to be two cameras on fixed pedestals, and then you’ve got one guy up in the stands and he’s doing the remote. I guess he’s for the curves and the other ones are for the straights?
Ed: But where’s the editing done – where are the shots chosen, because you’ve got three cameras going in. Are you sending all three feeds? Matt: Yes, all three feeds are streamed down to Christchurch. In fact, there are four feeds outgoing, so just on our quad split here, there are outgoing cameras one, two and three, and then the outgoing four is switchable from the router. You can see there from the router I’m switching what’s going into outgoing four, so they’ll be seeing that change down in Christchurch … Ed: at?
And wondering what you’re playing
Dogs on parade being closely watched by Campbell. Page 18
Matt:
Yes that’s correct, absolutely right.
Ed: So this is actually quite a small kit for an OB van. As we saw in the last interview, this is not designed as a full OB van? Matt: Absolutely not, no. We would like to get down to sending three personnel with this van, so that’s two camera operators and a set-up tech type person, and it all hinges on the fixed control room that sits in Christchurch, and the Vocus network that connects the two together. Ed: Taking up a small portion of the equipment rack is an openGear 3.0 from Ross. OpenGear is good for you Matt?
we’ve got plenty of headroom to do some more stuff with. Ed: So in other words, you could feed more cameras into this if you wanted? Matt: Absolutely, yes. If we put another V_remote box in we could effectively do six streams out to Christchurch, but of course, network bandwidth then starts to come into play. So at the moment, the connection to this site is a 1 Gigabit connection and our video streams are 150 Megabit JPEG2000. Four outgoing feeds is 600 Megabits of outgoing video on a 1 Gig link, so we’re getting close. If we were to up the ante and, say, throw six cameras in here, we would definitely need to look at the size of the pipe coming into the site. Ed: Matt:
Now you don’t actually handle a camera yourself? I have done …
Ed: But not at the moment … you’re the tech, you’re the one in overall charge of making sure the feed’s going out? Matt: Absolutely, yes. Myself and my colleague down in Christchurch, Michael Tompkins – I was responsible for designing the infrastructure and integration in the vans, and Michael did the other side of it, the fixed control room. It was a bit of a learning curve for us; the first facility I’ve been at the helm of building and I think likewise for him down there. Matt: Absolutely. We think that the openGear standard is very, very good because a lot of manufacturers now are starting to make cards for the openGear frames. We are using AJA cards in this frame to convert copper based SDI to optical based SDI and we’re using the optical to feed our commentary video monitors and things like that. We do have coax at the sites, but HD … we just didn’t want to risk it not working, and we knew that, eventually, fibre’s going to be useful for us for many other things, so we just bit the bullet and went fibre. But openGear is very, very good.
So it was definitely a good learning curve.
Ed: So there are plenty of slots free there and in the future, as things come along, you can just put in a card? Matt: Yes. We’ve got four cards in there at the moment, so we’ve got a Black DA for distributing the van Genlock around the place; we’ve got an SDI DA to do the camera returns and two AJA SDI to fibre converters, so there must be at least eight slots free for future expansion. Ed: As to the layout inside this van, you’ve got the active part of it at the back and then the rest of it is for storing your cameras and your other gear for the onsite setup – and carrying a couple of the crew? Matt: Yes, as you can see we’ve got some hefty storage shelves and things here, so that’s where all the gear goes when we’re in transport mode. Ed:
And some space in your racks if you need it?
Matt: And some space in the racks for future ideas, future expansion. Ed: Matt: Ed:
There’s nothing that’s already redundant? Ummm … no I don’t think so. Because this is pretty new I guess?
Matt: Yes. Every piece of kit that I look at is doing a job for us, so it’s all used. As you can see, on our core switcher we’ve got plenty of spare ports and Page 20
It’s all about cables.
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Ed: Now your camera ops – these are guys who are employed fulltime by New Zealand Racing Board? Matt: They are waged operators. They do get a lot of the work with us because we’ve got something like 1100 events a year, but they are waged operators. They understand the infrastructure of this operation, and once they’re on a camera on the cans, they forget that they’re talking to a director who’s 1000 kilometres away. The latency is very good, the audio quality is superb. Usually the director is a few hundred metres from them, but in this case, it’s unnoticeable that he or she is 1000 kilometres away. Ed: It’s a pretty specialised job isn’t it … it’s the sort of thing you can’t afford to have go wrong? Matt: The absolutely, yes.
camera
operation
–
Camera position top right covers the track.
Ed: How do you become a camera operator for the New Zealand Racing Board? Matt: We usually start them on cameras of … how do I put this … not insignificant cameras, but cameras that are a good training platform, say like a back straight camera or somewhere that’s not on air a lot, and from there, they upskill. We’ve obviously got a few guys on the staff who are very experienced cameramen, they worked for Sky, and are absolutely up to Sky calibre, so it’s a natural sort of progression for people to skill up and learn the craft.
Ed:
Just in case the link goes down?
Matt: Just in case the link goes down, yes, because once it’s recording, if the link does go down and the control loses it, it will still keep recording quite happily. We haven’t had to use it so far – touch wood! Ed: Because I guess the punters in the various TABs around the world might smell something if suddenly the picture went down and a voice said “oh, No3 won”? Matt: Ed:
Yeah. You’ve actually got to show it winning?
Ed: Now just a little bit more on your choice of cameras – you were involved in choosing the cameras that you fitted into this OB setup?
Matt:
Matt: I certainly knew what the team was looking at, but I didn’t make the overall final decision. I was basically given some options and I said that “yes, they would all work, but my preference is for this one”, and then obviously the final decision came down to things like service support, budget, and many things.
Matt: No, Trackside’s been going since 1992 I think, so being in the flight path hasn’t worried us so far.
Ed: But in terms of the style of camera, 3 chip ENG, there’s been a big move towards the cine style of camera in the industry, but would you agree with me that that would not be the right choice for this operation? Matt: Not for live OB work, no. The integrated intercoms, return audio channels, return video, remote CCU, all that sort of stuff is imperative for live OB work. Ed:
Absolutely.
Ed: And you don’t get any interference being in the flight path for Mangere here?
Ed: Now in terms of the fixed setup here – you’ve got a room under the stands from where you’re taking your cables into the van. Do you have to lay the feeds to the cameras out each time, or are there set lines built into the building and around the track? Matt: The sites where the racing happens have all fixed infrastructure cabling, and so we’ve got a STOB on the inside of the room there that has all the cable terminations on it. It’s all labelled up and nothing changes from job to job, it’s the same every time, so
And you want a good focal range surely?
Matt: Absolutely yes. We’ve got quite nice lenses on the cameras – the back straight cameras are fitted with Canon HJ24 x 7.5’s. I believe that’s a relatively new lens to the Canon line-up, they used to be 22 x 7.6’s; and the camera one lens is a Canon HJ 40 x 10 on an EFP style setup, so it’s got the big bracket to hold it, because it’s quite a large lens. So plenty of focal range and plenty of zoom. Ed: So there’s actually no recording on this site is there – there are no cards in the cameras to record anything? Matt: Certainly no cards in the cameras, but we do have one little Blackmagic SSD recorder here that is, again, remotely controlled from Christchurch as a pure backup. Down there, they’ve got a button on their VSM panels, they hit record, this thing starts recording; they hit stop, it stops. Purely just a backup, just in case … Page 22
it’s quite easy to teach the process to people who aren’t so technically minded. If they can follow process, then they should be able to get through a job no problem. Ed: But I see you’ve placed some microphones around the course – I guess you’ve got to set those up too, each time? Matt: Yes. At the moment, we’re placing that responsibility on the tech person who travels in the van. The camera operators are here for cameras, that’s their primary role when they first get here, and the tech – once they’ve plugged in the van and established connection to Christchurch – they go out and place a few microphones around the place that are just hardwired back to the van, and get Christchurch.
Campbell tracking the action.
streamed
down
to
Ed: Surely you could just set up a dish and connect to a satellite?
Ed: Do you provide your own race commentary from Christchurch?
Matt: I don’t think so … a 1 Gig link minimum …. much drawing in of breath …
Matt: Oh no, the commentator here is the live commentator on air. We have a digital Glensound commentary unit – that’s one end of it here, the other end’s up in the commentary box and they put a set of cans on and have full communication with the Christchurch director, full Mix-minus return in their ears, talkback, everything. So the live commentator here is the one who goes on air direct to the air waves.
Ed:
Ed: It looks as though you’ve got this pretty well sorted Matt? Matt:
Thanks.
Ed: Is this a case that you’ve done this so many times, or the organisation has, that it’s pretty much the same every day or can things go wrong? st
Matt: Well this operation went live on 1 of November, so we haven’t been doing it this way for too long – it’s the 19th today, so … A lot of planning and prep work went into it. Prior to the November “go live” date we had some multiple dress rehearsals at every site with every van, because there are three of these vans up and down the country.
But it’s only money.
Matt: That’s why it suits this operation well because the production value is pretty slimline – it’s only three cameras, we’ve got seven sites and we do 450 meetings a year, so it’s high capacity, minimal sites. It just makes sense. Ed: But if you did have a 1 Gig link into a network, you could pretty well go to any venue and with a bit of extra cabling and perhaps a little bit of extra time setting up, you could do OB with this? Matt: Yep, yep – providing we can get a connection to Christchurch, because that’s where the other end of it is, yes, I don’t see why not. Ed: So if you’ve got a client planning on pig racing, Matt’s the one to call. Matt:
Yes, sure, why not.
For the weeks leading into November, we were loading the network, hooking up to the Vocus network every day with them, turning them on, making sure they’d work, ironing out the bugs. A lot of prep went into making sure that go live date went without a hitch. Ed: So something like this van, could you take it to a venue like the Easter Show and cover live pig racing? Matt: The thing with it is that it doesn’t do a helluva lot without a network connection, so without a properly configured, high capacity IP connection to Christchurch …
Everyone is not a winner, but they all tried hard. Page 23
NZVN