neergmas
Member
I work at a college and my day-to-day is managing the video studio and equipment for the communication department, but my undergrad was in theatre, so when the theatre dept. puts on a musical and wants video monitors for the conductor & cast, I get to cross the street and play in the space I want to be in.
The usual set up that they've gone with since I've been here (this is my 4th year) is the band not in the pit, but rather upstage center, hidden quite a bit by the set. The conductor faces the back wall of the stage, so cueing the actors is impossible without video intervention. The trouble is that there's latency between the conductor's hands coming down on stage vs. what's seen on the monitor.
The set up that they had in place before I was hired and that I've been replicating since is as follows:
There is a flat screen tv mounted over the house, accessible from a catwalk. There is an RCA cable to the TV, which we run through a BNC connector into a Phat Cat system. The 500' cat5 (the length specified by the Phat cat unit) from that runs to the phat cat transmitter which is in the orchestra area, and there is a canon FS300 videocamera, with composite out, connected to the transmitter via another female RCA to M BNC connector. I have also had to split this signal via an RCA splitter to have a video monitor in the wings for supporting singers huddled around a mic in the wings.
Then for the conductor, I've got the same sort of system in reverse. The camera is up in the catwalk over the house near the TV, offering a birds eye view of the stage, and it all has the same cables, save that I have a small CRT monitor (cast offs from our TV studio's recent HDMI monitor upgrade) so from the Phat Cat receiver to the conductor's monitor, the connection is a BNC cable, no adaptor needed/used.
I'm working on memory from years past, and I believe there was no latency with the run from the camera of the conductor to the back stage monitors, nor any trouble with the conductor's monitor from the catwalk camera feed.
From what I piece together, the latency trouble is there because of the new TV we're using, am I correct? My predecessor had them rent the tv the first time he set it up, and then they bought it, as they assumed they'd want to use it each semester.
I anecdotally recall during my undergrad that we bought a security camera system from walmart and set that up, using long RCA cables, like 100' or more (i think) and they worked great, no trouble with the white balance with lights at full or blackout, perhaps it was a system made for looking in the dark, I recall we needed it for blackouts so that they would know actors were in place. This was over 10 years ago, so perhaps the reason I remember it working so well is that it was all "old" tvs?
So are there any suggestions, ideas, reading materials, etc on what I can do so that when the conductor gives a down beat, it's in real time on the monitor for the actors? Is it the panel tv, and should I be thinking of a way to stick some sort of "older" tv somewhere? I can take pictures of the space if it helps, because I cannot think of a place to stick a monitor where it isn't in sightlines and easily visible for actors. If you've done this and have or can take pictures, I'm wide open for suggestion!
The usual set up that they've gone with since I've been here (this is my 4th year) is the band not in the pit, but rather upstage center, hidden quite a bit by the set. The conductor faces the back wall of the stage, so cueing the actors is impossible without video intervention. The trouble is that there's latency between the conductor's hands coming down on stage vs. what's seen on the monitor.
The set up that they had in place before I was hired and that I've been replicating since is as follows:
There is a flat screen tv mounted over the house, accessible from a catwalk. There is an RCA cable to the TV, which we run through a BNC connector into a Phat Cat system. The 500' cat5 (the length specified by the Phat cat unit) from that runs to the phat cat transmitter which is in the orchestra area, and there is a canon FS300 videocamera, with composite out, connected to the transmitter via another female RCA to M BNC connector. I have also had to split this signal via an RCA splitter to have a video monitor in the wings for supporting singers huddled around a mic in the wings.
Then for the conductor, I've got the same sort of system in reverse. The camera is up in the catwalk over the house near the TV, offering a birds eye view of the stage, and it all has the same cables, save that I have a small CRT monitor (cast offs from our TV studio's recent HDMI monitor upgrade) so from the Phat Cat receiver to the conductor's monitor, the connection is a BNC cable, no adaptor needed/used.
I'm working on memory from years past, and I believe there was no latency with the run from the camera of the conductor to the back stage monitors, nor any trouble with the conductor's monitor from the catwalk camera feed.
From what I piece together, the latency trouble is there because of the new TV we're using, am I correct? My predecessor had them rent the tv the first time he set it up, and then they bought it, as they assumed they'd want to use it each semester.
I anecdotally recall during my undergrad that we bought a security camera system from walmart and set that up, using long RCA cables, like 100' or more (i think) and they worked great, no trouble with the white balance with lights at full or blackout, perhaps it was a system made for looking in the dark, I recall we needed it for blackouts so that they would know actors were in place. This was over 10 years ago, so perhaps the reason I remember it working so well is that it was all "old" tvs?
So are there any suggestions, ideas, reading materials, etc on what I can do so that when the conductor gives a down beat, it's in real time on the monitor for the actors? Is it the panel tv, and should I be thinking of a way to stick some sort of "older" tv somewhere? I can take pictures of the space if it helps, because I cannot think of a place to stick a monitor where it isn't in sightlines and easily visible for actors. If you've done this and have or can take pictures, I'm wide open for suggestion!