Posts tagged help
Penrose Market Fly Away CAD
For the Penrose Market last week we had to create a complete studio in a Rack called a Fly Away. We had to create this Fly Away because the studio facilities at Ravensbourne were in use for another shoot on the same day.
This Fly Away was created using any available kit that we found on Level 9, then using the time in our 208 and 204 lectures to design and build the system with the help of James Uren and the rest of the BET Pathway. After an initial brain storm and specification we came up with a simple system that consisted of:
- 7 SD Cameras
- 1 VT Deck
- 1 16 Channel Vision Mixer
- 1 16×1 Router
- CTP and Jack Field
- 3 Digital DA’s – 1 Analogue DA in the Fly Away
- 8 Digital DA’s – 4 Digital to Analogue Converters in the Monitor Stack
- 10 Monitors
- 1 Large Engineering Monitor
- 1 Test Pattern Genorator
- 2 Wave Form Monitors
The initial brainstorm and scribbled drawing was then drawn up, neatly, onto a large A1 sheet of paper, along with a Cable Schedule and CTP / Jack Field layouts. This large Drawing was then attached to the side of the rack and used as a reference throughout the rest of the project.
After the project was completed on Tuesday (22/11/2011) we were required as part of our Hardware Systems unit (204) to draw up a full CAD in AutoCad based on the same layers and components that were used to create the CAD’s for the main system in Ravensbourne. This exercise was designed to teach us how to use CAD to create Technical Drawings as well as be confident in reading and updating existing drawings. A screen shot of mine can be found on the right, with a PDF copy of the final cad available for download below.
The technical drawing we had to create was in fact two drawings of two separate systems which interacted closely with each other. The first was the main Fly Away, which was a single rack with all the processing and routing required, and the second was of the Monitor Stack which was required to make the Rack work. This is a major problem with the system as it require one part to work to make the rest work, whilst also doubling the amount of video connections in and out of the rack. However these problems were only noticed after the initial and were not a problem in this project as the monitor stack and rack were being built side-by-side at the same time.
Having so many connection to and from the rack also opened up another problem, which could simply be caused by confusion during the connection of the rack to the video sources and the monitor stack. This confusion could lead to video being sent the wrong way into the system, which could cause damage to equipment, or for example a Camera could be fed into one of the ENG inputs, thus it would appear to work fine on the router but it would have completely bypassed the monitor stack and more importantly the Vision Mixer.
Above I talked about just a few of the problems with last weeks Fly Away, in time I may look into re-drawing the Technical Drawing to alleviate some of the faults mentioned, and when I have re-drawn a new version of the system I will post a comparison between the two.
Download an A1 PDF of my Technical Drawing Here.
Download a PDF copy of my Cable Schedule Here.
Stickaid 2011
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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!