Posts by Tom Glover
Rave Live 2012 – Tom Glover
Welcome to my sub-blog about Rave Live 2012, or what ever it will finally be called this year. Today we started the project and looked into what is required for us to be sucessfull in the unit as well as the LIVE broadcast in mid-june 2012.
Today we found out we will actually be working towards two events, one test event in November 2011 and the other main event in June 2012. We also decided on our roles for the events, I 1/2 decided and was 1/2 allocated the Head of Interactive Media, which mainly entails creating IP Steams, Social Media and other cool interactive items.
IP Streams
My first big challenge is going to be getting my head around IP Streams and hows they integrate with HTML and the rest of the Broadcast Transmission Chain.
Today I started playing around with Quicktime Broadcaster for Mac OS X and my inbuilt iSight Webcam as the live video source. Thing started off smoothly, until my mac crashed. I did manage to get a low quality stream to Quicktime to my Windows PC but this was very limited in performance Maxing out at 15frames per second and for only short bursts (10-15 Seconds before crashing the Mac), which made it pretty useless.
Initial Todo List for the November Event
- Look into other Encoders and Streaming Servers
- Look into what is already available at Rave to Stream
- Look into how to link into the Rave Transmission Chain
- Create a Dynamic Website with Customised Content, by the Exhibitors
- Link Social Media into the Website
- Combine the Stream and the Website
- Possibly add mobile compatible Website/Stream.
Stickaid 2011
0
Stickaid2011
This weekend has been a very long yet fun weekend working on Stickaid 2011 with SilverLine Media, at Ravensbourne University, North Greenwich. Stickaid is a 24 hour broadcast streamed live onto Stickam.com and Youtube.com and this year it came from Ravensbourne, with the help of SilverLine providing the stream and many Ravensbourne students filling rolls from Camera Operators to Sound Supervisors to Editing and many more. The students that helped out over the weekend came from all year groups with some only 3 day’s into there courses.
Scott and Russell from Fluxity were originally brought in on Thursday and Friday to rig the events lighting and power. This job turned out to be over complicated due to some poor planning and communication from all parties involved. The rig should have taken only 8-10hours to complete but had to be completely re-worked to overcome the lack of correct power and distribution.
At 5pm on Friday afternoon Tom also joined the frustrated rigging team to assist in finalising some decisions and to get the rig moving again. The rig was finally completed at approximately 11.45pm on the Friday, with only a quick focus and program to be completed in the two hours before the 12Midday Broadcast start. Programming was completed during the first couple of hours of broadcast by Charlie Fox and Scott.
Fluxity Lighting was kept on call during the event for power and other related problems, and we are very pleased to report that we didn’t receive a single call, and the system was stable and survived the full 24hours.
Scott, Tom and Russell turned up at about 11am on Sunday for the De-rig that was due to begin at about 12.15pm. Between the three of us we had all of the lighting power and staging out of the rig and Ravensbourne back to how it was, in just under 6 hours, in a very relaxed yet steady de-rig.
All in all a long weekend in which we helped raise over £17000 for Unicef. It’s not too late to Donate still, just click on the logo above.
Here’s what Elliot from SilverLine Media had to say about working with Fluxity, over this last weekend:
Scott, Russell and in the end Tom, helped us Thursday, Friday and when I honestly thought that we weren’t going to have the lights going or anything, 2 hrs before TX they made it all happen. Thank you so much guys, especially for dealing so well with my screw ups and then the de-rig on Sunday!
PROJECT: Sarah Louise Ings – Music Video
0Sorry for the lack of update recently, just been so busy with loads of mini uni projects, including London Live and GCSE exams back at my old school and catching up on uni coursework and lectures.
The missed lectures and course were caused by Martins absence and other missed lectures due to the snow. To catch these up missing lectures we have been pulling extra sessions on day’s we normally have free, and where i would normally update my blog.
This weekend I have been working again with Ben Blake and Sarah Louise Ings on her latest Music Video. This weekend has been a strange one, and once again i wasn’t given any information about the director and the musicians vision until the day. This then again put me on the spot to come up with an adaptable lighting design thats sticks with the vision and looks good on camera.
I’m happy with the end result and am now waiting for them to edit the video and when its released I will post a few clips on here.
SCREENSAVER: 3D Cube Webcam
0
Over the past couple of day’s I have been playing around with Xcode and Quartz Composer, both of which are very powerful developer tools for the Mac and iOS platforms. This very simple ScreenSaver is the product of about 20mins work playing with Quartz Composer.
The scene shown by my webcam wasn’t very interesting but it gives you the idea of its capability, when loaded as a full screensaver, it also shows the time in various locations. Any feedback is welcome, I’m still just playing with the software, and any thing you would like to see improved or changed, drop me a comment and I’ll see what I can do.
Installation and System Requirements
Installation is very simple process, consisting of copying the 3D Webcam.qtz file from the zip to “MAC-HARD-DRIVE/System/Library/Screen Savers”. Once the file has copied, go to the ScreenSavers menu in System Preferences, and choose “3D Webcam” and Enjoy.
This ScreenSaver has only been tested on a MacBook Pro running 10.6.6, however it should run on any Mac running 10.5.1+. Please note, running this ScreenSaver on battery power, will drain the batteries quite fast (approx. 1hour continuos)
Download
3D Webcam ScreenSaver 1.0.0 Mac
UPDATE:
Version 2 is up – This version is only a minor update with a couple of improvements:
- The cube is now slightly smaller
- The cube now rotates slightly slower
- The cube now also moves around the screen, preventing black screen burn.
LECTURE: Broadcast Technology
0Today we looked at timecode with a substitute lecturer, the lecture today wasn’t very successful as they were trying to teach us directly from Martin’s note without reading over them before. We have been told to expect thatMartin’s absence will be for sometime, this could affect more of our BT lectures as well as our TV Systems and Signals Lectures, as he is our main course leader.
Today’s lecture was quite mismatched as he was just reading from the notes, and explaining the bits we did not understand, this still didn’t give us the full reason / story behind timecode and why we use it. I feel they could have gone into more depth on how it works technically and why its so crucial.