Video stage monitoring

Sometimes leaving the tape door open on cameras will prevent them from shutting off. Another possibility is having the camera plugged in, but no tape, with the tape door closed.
 
Liek i said in other posts, we have tvs on both wings, plus in the green room. Running through the annoucments channals we pipe the video feed that were going to tape and sell for visual, and run all thats coming off the board in for audio. Works great.
 
Is there any way of sending an RF signal through CAT5 with a home-made adapter? The idiots who designed our auditorium did not put RF into the booth but put in 8 channels of CAT5 (only 2 are required - one for the computer and the other for the paging system) Or is there any other way of sending video and audio through CAT5 - down to where RF cuts in (in the data cupboard where all of the CAT5 is connected to the patch panel) and run it through the modulator then into RF?
 
Cat 5 Baluns ain't hard to come by... sound like something your Rat Shack might stock... But, they can't go through a hub... patch panels are OK, by any active equipment is bad news.

I've got an article about DIYing it, but it's reasonably old and given current prices for these sorts of things what with CCTV everywhere these days, it's probably not cost effective to do it yourself.
 
Our theatre has absolutely no monitoring for the cast whatsoever, only a mic installed on the catwalk to get to the booth monitoring system. A few years ago, we got a baby monitor to put backstage so people in the greenroom can hear their cues, and get backstage in time for their entrance. Well that woked okay, but the audio level and quality wasn't great at all. People had trouble hearing their cues. I contemplated installing a 70V monitor system with a little 70V amp and speakers, but running new wire and buying the amp and speakers would be too great of a cost. And then the other day while I was thinking about it, I put two and two together, and the lightbulb went on.
About five years ago, the school was wired with an IDF in every room, numerous Cat 5 cables, and most importantly, TV cable coax. Last year, the school had a portable rack built that has a modulator, a mixer, a couple of wireless mics, and a DVD/VCR in it. The whole package is in an SKB portable rack. The modulator can be plugged into any coax jack in the school, and transmits whatever's plugged into it on one of the unused channels (can't remember off-hand, but I think it's 16).
Now here's where we can use it. A camera can be placed in the booth focused on the stage, and plugged into the video input of the modulator only. The sound from the camera won't go anywhere as it is useless (the actors don't need to hear our chatter about them ;)). An aux off of the TT24 (no problem with shortages there, there's 12 auxes) will go into the audio input of the modulator. The overhead mics on stage will be assigned to the aux pre-fader, and some of the other sources (i.e. wireless mics, MD and CD decks) will be assigned to the aux post-fader. The output of the modulator will be plugged into the coax jack in the booth.
We certainly don't have a shortage of TV's in our school...there's at least 10 of them on carts in storage. Plus, many of the school's remodeled rooms have A/V systems with LCD projectors, so teachers don't need the old TV carts anymore. A few of those TV's will be placed in strategic locations, such as in the green room and out in the halls and entrance lobby. They would all be tuned to channel 16 (or whatever it is), so everyone in the greenroom and out in the halls would be able to see the play, and hear the show audio.
Go ahead and tell what you think about it...and if you do something similar for a video monitoring system.

We do basically the exact same thing. My school had a TV system put in when it was built with TVs in every room, including dressing rooms, and we video all of our shows, so we take a feed from the camera on our spot deck, and it goes to a certain channel. We set the TVs in the dressing rooms to that channel (and when my school's theatre was built, they didn't give us a green room or a fly system. why I have no idea) and we also set up 2 TVs in the pit so the orchestra can see the show.

For sound we use a matrix to send the house mix to the distributed audio in the dressing rooms, lobby, and scene shop.
 
Do do what you want to do you need an agile modulator , Blonder Tongue makes one, you can see the channel you want to broadcast on. You then need a combiner, (assuming that you have some sort of tv distrubition system probably cable.) If you are on a local cable connection you need to make sure you are using a channel that they are not using (sometimes they use "unused" tv channels for their internet service.

These modulators take composite video and a single channel of audio in and modulate with an rf out. You need coas for the rf signal. these days if you look around you can get 1000 foot spools of rg59 or rg6 for pretty cheap.

Make sure you get an agile model (channels are changable ) and that it is a MODULATOR and NOT a processor, processors are common and cheap but don't do what you need

Sharyn
 
Sounds like your RF system uses a portable sub-band modulator to feedback a signal over the same system and then remodulates that onto Channel 16 for distribution. I've designed several systems this way with a protable cart just as you noted. That should work fine, with a couple of caveats.

One is that the signal will go everywhere. This may be good in that it allows a lot of flexibility in rooms you can use for Dressing Rooms and Green Rooms but it also means anyone with a cable outlet will be able to watch and potentially record the signal. Another is that you want to make sure your camers works and gives an acceptable picture. That might be a long throw and low light for some camers, so try it before proceeding that way.

As far as video or CATV over CAT5, it is important to understand that most of the CAT5/UTP baluns and interfaces are not IP devices. They allow you to use CAT cabling in lieu of other cabling types, but they are still point-to-point systems and not made to run over networks. All you are doing is replacing an audio, video, RF or other cable with CAT5 cable. "Over CAT5/UTP" and "over a network" are two very different things and there are IP based streaming appliances available that do run over LANs and WANs, but they are much more expensive. Just a reminder as many people think they can plug some cheap CAT5 adapters into any RJ ports on their network and that's not how it works.
 
Last edited:
As far as video or CATV over CAT5, it is important to understand that most of the CAT5/UTP baluns and interfaces are not IP devices. They allow you to use CAT cabling in lieu of other cabling types, but they are still point-to-point systems and not made to run over networks. All you are doing is replacing an audio, video, RF or other cable with CAT5 cable. "Over CAT5/UTP" and "over a network" are two very different things and there are IP based streaming appliances available that do run over LANs and WANs, but they are much more expensive. Just a reminder as many people think they can plug some cheap CAT5 adapters into any RJ ports on their network and that's not how it works.
In my situation, what we did, was plug into any old network outlet (all individually numbered) and unpatch the other end of the cable from the switch in the data cupboard, which also houses the RF network for the building, and plug it into a modulator. works like a dream.
 
Just a note that the last post in this thread was just over 4 years ago. Though it is always good to have additional information for posterity, chances are they have long since solved their problem.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back